Fed Hikes Rates, Oil Affordability Crisis & Paramount Threatens California Exit | PBD #858

0:00Thank you. has heard this or not, this just happened. A lot of people are not happy about this. Forbes 400 list billionaires. Do you know 590 billionaires were not rich enough to make it on the Forbes 400 list? Catastrophic. Times are hard. You know, a number came out saying Americans' income hits record high. Then people are like, wait a minute. Whose income is hitting record high? Top is hitting record high, but at the same time, lower earners lose ground. So the whole concept of rich getting rich or poor getting poor affordability, We got some of that that we'll be talking about today. Umberto came in today pissed off.

1:03He parked his car 500 yards away, and he walked here because he's trying to save money on gas. So he parked no longer. He walks. He was sweating. It was wet. You know, he knows what I'm talking about. He had his mustache all uncrooned. He had his mustache. Look, as much as we're laughing, having fun with this, people are having a challenging time with gas prices. We're seeing it with diesel, and I'm sure you saw the story on JPMorgan Chase. they're asking the JP Morgan Chase analysts and they said, can you model what's going to happen with oil prices? I don't have a clue what the hell is going on.

1:35When have you heard an analyst saying, I can't predict what's going to be happening with the marketplace? And because of that, we decided to bring two guys in. Snyder, Jeff, very smart guy. He comes here, gives us a workout here. Him and Tom fight it out on who's more smart. It gets both of them going a little bit, which is good competition. We like that. I don't think we fight. No, you fight a lot. You guys fight hardcore. That's all fair, though. That's all fair. And then we also have the good-looking, handsome. Could have gone a different direction in his life. Could have gone on Hollywood, maybe done Top Gun 3.

2:07I don't know. He could have done a complete different direction. But we've got the great Will Witt here with us as well. So with that being said, let's get right into it. I'm glad we put him in the middle of these two so they're not fighting over brains. You don't need the brains. Let the good-looking guys get on. When we need sports commentary, we're going to go to Will. We have to go to the next thing. Will knows a lot about sports. He just made it very clear on how much sports he watched growing up. And maybe he'll share that story. Yeah, exactly. So, okay, Paramount leaving California. Where are they going?

2:35Nobody knows. There's some speculation. But what everybody knows is they're leaving California. Why would a company leave California? It's not like they're doing anything bad. Alicia, you can bring it, no problem. But they're leaving California. Number two, Massey wants to impeach Hexet. Johnson wants to shut down the, you know, the government. Massey's saying, why are we doing this if we're about to lose midterms? We've got only a few months left to fix this. Others are saying, why are you going after Hexit? This is not the way of doing it. Maybe we'll have that conversation here together. Then you have the Fed rate increase that happened.

3:09Kevin Walsh, Tom was panicking for a few weeks, worried about if that was going to happen or not. It did. Rates went up a quarter of a basis point. He came out, and some say he's trying to be his own man. Some say he made the right decision. Some are upset at it. The Bonds folks like, what's his name, Jeffrey Gunlak, he thinks it needs to go up even another point. Trump thinks it needs to go down to 1%. We'll have that conversation, how it impacts you as the individual that's going through this. And then we talked about that in a minute. Houthis drone strike over Mecca, and the Saudis are like, wait, what are you doing?

3:42That wasn't us. We would never do such a thing. It was you. No, we would never do such a thing like that. So now Saudi's coming up to ask Trump for help. Trump is saying we're not going to be involved. We'll get into that story as well. Rogan says if AI was running the world, there would be no wars. He says he thinks AI running the government would stop all wars on the planet. You guys don't even know that's one of the stories. I kind of want to know what you think about it. Would it? Would it be better? Would we have more wars, less wars? Would there even be mankind for there to be no wars? Who knows?

4:14Maybe it sparks a good conversation. And then we got Vivek Ramaswamy, once a superstar on the Republican side, now going against Amy in Ohio. The Calci numbers came up, and the Calci numbers are not looking favorable for Vivek. And maybe we can talk about why that happened, why that's happening. And then Kash Patel. You know, I'm watching Kennedy. What's his name? What's the gentleman's name? John Kennedy. He's phenomenal. He's asking Kash. I heard you change the requirements to be an FBI agent. We did. Now, why would you change the requirements for bestiality? He says, we have to do it because of if people were tied to, what does he say, if people were tied to, what do you call it, human trafficking and you were forced to, he says, so we want to protect.

5:06Some unsavory thing. Yeah, he says, we want to protect them on both sides. He says, oh, so you're going to protect animals from bestiality? He says, no, he starts laughing. And so people are wondering, why would you allow people who have experienced bestiality to become FBI agents? It's a valid question to bring up. It's actually a very weird thing to even do. His answer was worse than the question. His answer? It was far worse than the question. Whose answer, Kennedy's or Cash's? No, Cash's. Yeah, it was a very weird answer. The implications of his answer were far worse than the question. So, you know, I have an idea of what I think they're doing with that.

5:36And maybe we'll get into that. Lindsey Klansky's holdout juror, a man who interviewed him. His name is now out there. His brother's coming out talking about why he made the decision. And one African-American man who interviewed him is saying why he chose the position from day one and never changed. And then farmers who voted for the president are not happy right now. They're having a hard time financially. And then we'll definitely talk about some gas prices. And there was a college girl, I believe, at your college, Pennsylvania, was attacked. This video went viral. Nobody on mainstream media talked about it at all whatsoever.

6:09I'll go to Will on this. And then last but not least, for some of you guys that are watching football, for those of you guys that watch football, I'm going to give you a statistic, which is very crazy. There's this quarterback, then Josh Allen, which is kind of a big deal. Did you know, Adam and Tom, that Josh – and by the way, Will, I know you follow this stuff closely. Did you know Josh Allen has more rushing touchdowns, 83, than Frank Gore, all time, than Edgren James, all time, than Tony Dorsett, all time, Then Earl Campbell, all-time. Then Azeel Elliott, all-time. Then LaShawn McCoy, all-time.

6:47Then Eddie George, all-time. Then Ricky Williams, all-time. Then Tiki Barber, Josh Allen. And Josh Allen is not even a flippin' running back. All these guys were great running back. He's a quarterback with 83 rushing touchdowns. Holy moly. And I bring this up because this man's a diehard Bills fan. Bills. And I used to be a Bills fan. when I first came to this, it's very common for Iranians that they come to America, they become Bills fans. It's very natural. Yeah, Thurman Thomas, Bibi, all those old guys. But anyways, with that being said, before we get started, we just recently came up. We had a lot of shirts that we would sell with all the valutainment and the gear that we had.

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8:08With a clean, tailored drape that brings quiet sophistication to the everyday. The Pima Tee, the essential elevated. There you go. Go to FLB.com. These come in navy blue. They look insane. Navy blue, super light. We got them in black. We got them in tan, green, and white. Go to FLB.com. place your order, get all the colors for yourself, your son, your husband, your brother. Super, super comfortable shirts that we have here. But go to FLB.com, get the latest Pima cotton shirts, and start sporting the FLB gear. Again, FLB.com. With that being said, let's get right into it. First topic I want to start off with is interest rates.

8:51The Federal Reserve raises the rates. Everybody's like Kevin Warsh goes up on the stage. He took maybe five seconds. He says the Federal Reserve has decided to raise the rates a quarter of a basis point. The market within minutes loses a half a trillion dollars of valuation at the time. It's recovered ever since. Lots of topics. Lots of people started talking. What's going to happen next? Jeff, when you first saw this, were you surprised? And was this the right move? No and no. You're not surprised? No, no. But you don't think this is the right move? No, it wasn't the right move. Okay, tell me why.

9:22There's a couple of reasons. First of all, the reason the Fed actually did raise rates is simply because they don't know. They're basically saying, we think what's going to happen in the short run is that consumer prices are going to go up, which they already have due to energy prices. We're worried that they could spill over into other prices and become broader inflation. Inflation went up to what? 5.3, whatever the number was. Four, four and a half, depending on which measure you're talking about. Right. The CPI versus the PC. Right. They look at the PC deflator, which has been a little bit higher than the CPI.

9:51But they realize that an energy shock doesn't necessarily become inflationary. In fact, historically, it doesn't. So when you look at their summary of economic projections, which is the material that comes out with the press conference, what they actually model and what they're actually expecting is that consumer prices will go up in 2026 and then decelerate in 2027. So if that's the case, you ask, why the hell would you raise rates? If you actually think that there is no inflation problem next year other than energy prices, why would you raise rates? And the answer is they're not actually confident in their projection.

10:20They think that this is going to happen because this is what normally happens. However, they also remember what they said in 2022. So basically, Kevin Warsh is taking out as somewhat of an insurance policy. And it's more of a symbolic insurance policy than not. We're going to raise rates because we think this is a one-time increase in energy prices. And once the oil prices go back down lower, we won't have an inflation problem. We don't know for sure. because I don't want to be Jay Powell and be criticized heavily by basically everybody for not doing something. We're going to proactively raise rates to make it look like we're we're on the ball here about an inflation problem.

10:55But we don't think we have, but we might actually have. So it's it's it's it's a combination. So is it the right idea? Is it the right? Is it the right tactic? No, of course not. They're just basically saying we're not really confident that what we think is going to happen is going to happen. Well, what are you at with that? It's pretty laughable that they're thinking, you know, we might not have an inflation problem later on and thinking that, oh, it's going to get better and everything's going to slow down. I mean, you're talking about 5 percent inflation. But when you look at the numbers on just basic consumer goods, I mean, there's inflation on things with beef and coffee and, you know, normal things that people are using that is much higher than just a 5 percent increase.

11:29So I see this getting a lot worse before it gets better. But to me, the real question is, you know, I'm an anti-Fed guy. I think the Federal Reserve has been bad for America since its inception. You had the second central bank of the United States, which was shut down. Then they made the Federal Reserve. And for me, I just don't understand why we have 12 people who are deciding essentially the economic future, economic reality of a$30 trillion economy. It makes no sense. And it's the same thing because, you know, Trump is talking about 1 percent interest rates. I wouldn't want Trump to be in charge of this either.

11:59Lowering it to 1 percent. Yeah. You don't want that. No. Lower interest rates are bad. OK. I mean, you heard Japan also raised the rates to highest in 31 years. Well, that raises another question, okay? This is not just a U.S. problem, right? If we're having this energy shock and the effect on consumer prices in Europe, in Japan, in Asia, not China. China is a different story entirely, but most of the rest of the world. If most of the rest of the world is having a consumer price problem, what the hell is the Federal Reserve going to do? If it's a global factor, it's a set of global factors, why is the Fed responding to global factors that are beyond its capabilities to begin with?

12:32And I agree with you, Will. The Fed is – it's not what everybody thinks it is. It doesn't actually control the economy. In fact, the real purpose of the Fed is for periods like this. So if you're a politician like Trump, you can say, this is a mess. You guys screwed it up. I didn't do this. It's not my fault. It's your fault. The Fed is basically a lightning rod. That's what it exists for. It's easy to blame the Fed as a politician for all the problems that are going on. Or anybody, right? Anything. The market can blame the Fed for raising, oh, stocks went down, damn Fed, why did they raise rates?

13:03I mean, it's the illusion of control. So, Tom, let me ask you this. So if Japan raises the rates, and typically when you look at Japan raising the rates and us, we're not on the same page 75 % to 80 % of the time, not moving together. Okay? We're not. 20 % of the time to 25 % of the time, we move together. What we do, they do. The other 75, 85, we don't. We raise the rates. They raise the rates to the highest. And we know at one point these guys had negative 0.1 % was their rates for about an eight-year period from 2016 to 2024, which that's the extreme, complete opposite. By the way, when we're talking about them raising their rates, you know what Japan's federal rate is right now?

13:41What do you think their rate is right now? One and a quarter. 1%. Oh, wow. They're exactly at 1 % right now. It's not like it's an astronomical number that they have. They're at 1%. They stayed negative for eight years. Why do you think both parties, Japan and U.S., are on the same page with this? I think they're on the same page for different reasons. And I think you don't think there's like a correlation between the two. I think they watch each other, but I don't think there's as much correlation when you take a look at what our Fed did. What our Fed did is something that's non-correlated. They said we're raising rates.

14:12And by the way, you guys are teasing me about fighting with Jeff. I'm going to fight with you. But I agree with Jeff on this, and I'll go into the specifics. This is absolutely a supply shock, and it is a supply shock to be exact. That is 65 percent the barrel of oil, which has moved since February 28th when the fund started, and it is 35 percent the 3-2-1 crack spread, which has been driven by refinery closures in the United States. And we have a shortage of refinery capability, which also has raised the price of a gallon of gas and worse, a gallon of diesel because the economy runs on diesel.

14:54And that's my point. The economy runs on diesel. And you can take a look at the inflation you're seeing everywhere from a strawberry to the gallon of gas. And you find it's in the supply shock that is related to energy. And so they are taking a pay. If they if they. Here's what the Fed did. I'm going to prove my independence from the president. I'm going to raise rates a quarter point, not a half, not a whole point. So not like a not like a 2009, 2008 crash and I'm moving things big. I'm just going to raise by a quarter point and I'm giving lip service to inflation because I don't want to be wrong.

15:32I agree with Jeff on that point. They basically did this to give them a get out of jail free card if inflation keeps going up. Well, I tried. I raised it a little bit. That's the textbook thing to do, except the inflation is not related to that. And when they're talking about next year go down, basically what you need is you're only going to get part of it back. You stop the war and you get oil running and you get the Venezuelan stuff, the heavy crude coming across, the Gulf of America coming into Houston. Okay, you're going to get some relief, but you're not going to get relief on refining costs in the U.S.

16:05You're only going to get some of it back. And so just – and raising rates by a quarter point doesn't build another refinery. Raising rates by a quarter point doesn't open the Strait of Hormuz. and raising rates by a quarter point. So why do it? Why do it? Because they wanted to get out of it. He wanted to prove his independence from the president. He wanted to say it's inflation because everybody's saying inflation, inflation, inflation. And he's getting beat pretty hard. So let me ask you a question. Does this right now make Hassett look good? Because he was another one that they were looking at.

16:35So yeah. So you think he would have done anything different? No, there's technical reasons for this too. I mean, you don't want to get into the econometrics here. They have something called R-Star, which is how they evaluate where interest rates should be. And there's a whole big argument there. What I'm asking you is the following. Could the president have chosen somebody else that would have not raised rates and would have lowered it? No. In this situation. This is very important, by the way. If you can isolate this issue, go for it. Because a lot of people are saying maybe he could have chosen somebody else.

17:03It wouldn't have made a difference. So anybody the president would have chosen, you're saying it would have been the same result. It would have been the same result. Because the pressure they get from who? The pressure they get from, first of all, the staff. The Federal Reserve does take a look at the economy. They have all these sophisticated econometric models that tell them they should do this if this set of circumstances arises. And that set of circumstances, a bunch of these boxes checked. So whoever was going to be Fed chairman was going to say, I have to raise rates because the staff is telling me I have to raise rates.

17:27And by the way, the issue is the misunderstanding of inflation. They're saying it's inflation. It's inflation. Well, wait a minute. It's like having the flu. What flu do you have? Do you have a common seasonal flu or do you have COVID? They're saying there is inflation, Pat, and everybody around them is saying inflation. So guess what? You reach into Batman's utility belt and you pull out a quarter point increase, but they're failing to look at what's causing the inflation. It is not overheated driving economy. With a K-shaped economy, by definition, the middle class isn't getting jobs and raises and wage inflation, which drives broad inflation because you have to pay your people more than you have to raise price on your products.

18:06That's not what we're seeing. It's a supply shock inflation. But they're sticking with the it's inflation and they made the move. Look, I'm going to default to you guys when it comes to these macroeconomic things. I'll just get my two cents. If you told us six months ago, a year ago, that the new chairman of the Fed would basically go against Trump and raise interest rates, I'd say you've got to be kidding me. Because sort of the illusion was that Trump was handpicking exactly who he wanted in the Fed. He's basically condemning Jerome Powell and he's going to handpick his guy. What we've just realized is Trump is not a king.

18:41The guy he picked to be chairman of the Fed in his first major move was like, yeah, sorry, Trump. Inflation's up. I'm going against you. And by the way, it says it was unanimous by the committee. 12-0. Completely unanimous. So when Trump says this was only for political reasons, I don't think so. I think they're actually trying to fight inflation. But I think that's what Jeff is saying. And to me, I would rather know that. And by the way, what do you think is a likelihood that Kevin talked to the president telling him that I'm going to be raising the rates before actually doing it? Do you think that conversation happened?

19:14What do you think is a likelihood they spoke? He was asked about it and he evaded the question. But what do you think is likelihood that they spoke? Oh, of course he did. Okay, so to me, but I will tell you, I don't think Trump is as pissed off as you would have expected him to be. I don't think Trump is pissed at Kevin. I think Trump is sitting there saying, here's, the conversation could have gone something like this. Hey, Mr. President, I have to raise the rates, and they're voting unanimously, and I'm telling you the news first. Great. Then Trump may say, I'm going to trash it as well, and I'm going to disagree with it publicly.

19:43No, I know, Mr. President, what you're going to do. I'm just letting you know as a respect that you're going to know. A call could go like that, but Trump himself doesn't seem surprised. The people I see that are surprised are maybe the guys like Tom, maybe the guys that are in the business, maybe the guys that are saying, maybe not even you, that it's people that are like, why would they raise the rates? Why would they do this? this is not the right thing to do. Even Trump doesn't seem surprised that they raised the rates. Were we about to have the clip there where Trump talks about it? And by the way, correction, the rates in Japan is one and a quarter.

20:11You were right. So it's not one. It's one and a quarter. What is this clip? This is the clip with – That's the point. You know, the comparison is in Japan. It's how it's – the U.S. – the Federal Reserve usually acts in concert with every central bank around the world. Japan is the outlier. Political inhospitable. Yeah. So, again, these things are global. You're saying the U.S. – Wait, this clip. Go for it. Watch this clip. This is Trump. Go ahead. Yeah, I do. I mean, I'm relying on Kevin, but he's got, you know, a very tough board. He's got a board that was put there by a lot of other people, and the interest rates are too high.

20:42They're not appropriate. And I told, I talked to Kevin, and I said, you might as well vote with the board, because it's not going to matter. The board is very hostile. They're very political. They're doing the wrong thing. They're a bunch of politicians or people put on by politicians. This is my point. You can pause it right there. My point is he is not pissed off at Kevin the way he was pissed off at Powell. It's a very different relationship because I think even he knew. So let me get to the next story here, which kind of goes together. Do you know what is special about today? Do you know the record numbers on the highest diesel price ever per gallon is today?

21:20Ever. In the history of America, today's the record. Ever. $6.45 is today. The previous highs that we hit numbers-wise was June of 2022 was the previous AAA high that we hit. This is right around when the war got started with Russia and Ukraine. And if you want to go even previous to that, when we hit a record high, was I think 2008 when diesel hit. Is it 8? I think it is 2008. Yes, peak of July of 2008. So 476, that was the peak. We had never experienced that before. June 22, 581, we had never experienced that before. And then today, 645 diesel, we've never experienced this before. So you'll hear a lot of people say this directly impacts.

22:01So some people may say, well, but I don't drive diesel. It's not about you driving diesel. It's about all the trucking companies, transportation moving. They're paying more. Cost is going to go up. They have to pass it down to somebody else. You saw burger prices being higher, and you're seeing a reflection in different places. I'm going to go to one story, then, Jeff, I'm going to come to you first. So JPMorgan Chase, and Tom brought it up this morning, JPMorgan Chase is being asked about what they think is going to happen with oil. Give us an opinion, Will. You're an analyst at JPMorgan Chase.

22:32What do you think is going to happen? Here's what the analyst said. This is a Bloomberg article. More than six months after the start of the Iran war, JPMorgan Chase, oil analysts, are stating what many traders have been saying privately. The path to the end of the war is increasingly impossible to predict. So if you can't predict how it's going to end, I cannot tell you what's going to happen to oil prices. Several economic red lines, the bank assumed the administration would be unwilling to cross, including oil above$100 a barrel, gasoline near$5 a gallon. Surging treasury yields have already happened, making the exit strategy less clear.

23:08Analysts, including Natasha Keneva, said in a note, the market is on edge, in our view. The analyst wrote, oil fair value in September is estimated around$90 a barrel. prices through close to 106, and implying the market is pricing in a risk of additional 4 million barrels a day of supply losses on top of the 10 million barrels a day already disrupted. So it seems like the market can't say what's going to happen to oil prices. What do you say, Jeff? It's not really about oil. Like you said, it's about diesel and gasoline, and that's where the problem is. The bottleneck in energy has moved from oil to distillates.

23:43There's a lack of refinery capacity, as Tom pointed out, in the United States, which is coming back to haunt us at the worst possible time. You've got disruptions with Russian diesel exports, which have been banned because they have their own problems over there. You've got issues with the Middle East. Then all sorts of shortages that are going to start appearing in Asia and other places, which is going to bid up the price of diesel as well as gasoline. With crack spreads, the crack spread is simply a market price that gives you an estimate of how the physical reality of the energy market. And the diesel crack spread right now is a ridiculously high$112 per barrel, which is insane.

24:21But that goes to show you the level of desperation and urgency in the energy market because there's that level of a potential shortfall in diesel. And we're rapidly running through all the inventories and supplies as it is. So the market is basically saying once that physical shortfall really starts to manifest itself, we don't know where prices are going to end up. the$6,$6.50,$7 range that we're getting now in diesel is probably just the beginning. So diesel prices are going to hit. How do you think it's going to hit? We could see$10. $10 of diesel. By when? I have no idea. That's the thing.

24:56Give me the timeline. Shortest, latest. Shortest would be the end of the year. Of course, we're eventually going to hit$10, but I'm saying like. End of the year. It's that soon. It's that close. In December, diesel could hit$10 a gallon. $10 a gallon. And then the consequence. Why do you say that? Based on what? Again, the crack spread. The crack spread is an estimate of how much of there's a price dislocation in the market. Is this it right here that you're talking about, the crack spread? No, that's inventory. Can you pull up the crack spread real quick? So the crack spread shows what? The crack spread shows you how profitable it is to refine a barrel of oil.

25:26That's 321 crack spread, which is oil, which is gasoline plus distillate fuel. Explain it to the average person out there so they can understand. Yeah, I've never heard of the crack spread. No, we're sure today. I thought we were going to go to a porno. We're going to the hood or something right now. We'll have a lot more fun. We've done that before, but go ahead. When we're talking about crack spread, you know things are not good. Yeah. So the crack spread basically tells you the price of oil. Depends on who it is. How profitable is it to convert? Sorry. I'm just saying. It's true. You guys got dirty minds here.

25:58Stay focused. Go ahead. How profitable is it to refine a barrel of oil into, in a 3-2-1 crack spread, it's three barrels of oil into two barrels of gasoline and one barrel of distillate stuff. Diesel, it's a little bit different. but it's a similar idea. And so when the crack spread is high, what that basically tells you is that it's very profitable to take a barrel of oil and turn it into something useful. And the reason it's profitable to do so is because the marketplace says, I want that something useful and I'm so desperate for it, I will pay a premium to do so. So the crack spread is basically a premium on supply.

26:29Jeff, who else agrees with you that diesel could hit$10? If the JPMorgan Chase analyst is not making any predictions, who else agrees with you that could hit$10? I think the marketplace does. Yeah. The marketplace. The marketplace. That's why the crack spread is that high. But also, I mean, the reason they said we can't model this is because they don't want to say it'll be$10 a gallon. So do me a favor. Do you think the president knows this? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so if the president knows this and you're in his ear, and let's just say that conversation is taking place, Mr. President, diesel could hit$10 by December.

26:58Midterms are when? November. What does he keep saying? Gas prices are going to drop right after the election midterms. Why is he saying that? Because he needs to win midterms. You think the average person is buying that? No. Okay. So let's say it does go to$10. What happens to America? What happens to the market? What does the average person do if it hits$10? If it hits$10, what will happen is you'll see layoffs. You'll see jobs disappear. You'll see companies that are struggling. You'll see a lot of weak companies that have been kept alive through refinancing debt start to go under. It will be economically, it will be like every other energy shock that we've gone through in history.

27:32It leads into a recession. And I think Trump knows. I've said this from the very beginning. Trump said Iran is worth the cost. If we have to go into a global recession, if I lose the midterms really badly, it's worth the cost. And so everybody expected the idea that there's these red lines in the energy market. That was never the case. Do you agree with him that Iran's worth the cost? If he executes it correctly, yes, it will be worth it. Long run. So you're part of a minority group that believes that. But you're saying if he gets it done, it's worth it. Why? Because the pain in the economy will be in the short run.

28:07If Iran actually turns into what we hope it could be, that's a long-run future that's hugely positive. So it would be worth the short-run economic pain and political pain because it's going to be political pain. I think Republicans need to steel themselves for how this election could go. Well, I just want to say this. When the Iran war started, I was one of the few voices who was saying, I don't think this is a good idea, everything like that. And I got called a liberal. I got called a traitor. You know, I'm now a horrible person and all this and no longer a conservative. You're a Russian shill.

28:36Russian shill, you know. And everyone was telling me at the time, go back and read the comments on my videos about the Iran war. They said two weeks is going to be done. It's all going to be taken care of. You know, oil prices are going to go way down. Everything's going to be great. We're going to figure it out. And now look at where we are, you know. And I hate to be the guy. But what was your reasoning for not being forward at that time? Well, I think we've seen this, you know, song and dance before with the endless wars. And for me, I just I don't see it working out any other way. You know, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan.

29:02I mean, it all seems to me the same to me. And I didn't want America dragged in. And that's not just from, you know, Americans going overseas and being separated from their families, potentially dying, but also from this economic standpoint that we're looking at. You know, it seems to me like you're making companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing incredibly rich with these defense contracts. And I know, again, people will be like, you sound like a liberal right now, you know, anti-war liberal. But that's true. To be honest, this is this is what it really goes down to. I think a lot of conservatives would agree with that whole, we all know what, who was it, Eisenhower, before he stepped down, where he says, be careful with the military-industrial complex, how much money they can make and keep the wars going.

29:38I get that part. Tom, where are you at with this? I'll tell you where I'm at with this right now is that if you take a look at where that crack spread was before it started, and I think we were at$24,$26. So it was$24 to$26 to take a barrel of oil and to turn three barrels of oil into two barrels of gasoline and one barrel of diesel. That is up now three and a half X. And so I think right now, I think we are literally a couple of weeks from seeing eight dollars a gallon in some of the high tax states on diesel like California. And it's devastating that soon as you touch that you're you are playing with fire right now.

30:15And as soon as you touch eight dollar diesel, you're going to see layoffs and hospitality. The hospitality industry, which is discretionary consumer spending, is going to do a faceplant. It is absolutely going to stop. It's going to be like COVID. What I'm saying is similar to COVID that the revenue will stop so quickly. You have restaurants and independent restaurants that are not supported by national franchise fees and things like that. Already they're under deep stress or laying people off right now in hospitality. You're seeing it. And you see the jobs report, which included seasonal things that happened, specifically in education, as everybody went back to school.

30:53And the jobs report was misread. And so what I see right now, I see misreadings. And to answer your question directly, I'm worried about$8 diesel because I think that's where the tree starts. The tree right now is leaning. I think the tree falls at$8 diesel. And I think we have a very tough winter and we have a recession. Like you said with COVID. Oh, sorry, I didn't. Go for it. No, no, go ahead. Like you said, with COVID, I mean, the most important thing with that, it was like, what, 60 % of all small businesses in America shut down? And that's what it seems like it's going to be again. You think this is going to be a debt-level type crisis?

31:25Well, it's funny. I was just on the phone. I always talk to my family, and my sister is married and looking to maybe buy a house. I'm like, I'm not buying a house right now. Everything's going to crash soon enough. How old are you? I'm 20, or just turned 30, actually, last week, so 30. Happy birthday. Congratulations. I know, I know. I decided to just say 29 forever. Just like I'm 40 still, Pat. Yeah, exactly. You know, but it seems like the small businesses are all going to get shut down. The big businesses are going to take another huge win off of this. I mean, it seems to me like it's going the exact same way.

31:53Look, I think these are all worthy discussions and discussions that need to be having gas prices, oil prices. I keep going back to the same thing. This is where I respectfully disagree with my super liberal friend Will right now. If we didn't deal with Iran now, when would we have dealt with them? Because if not Trump, then who? President AOC? I will tell you this, though. You better finish the deal. Okay. You better finish. And this is a guy that you know where I stand. I fully agree. But if we didn't do it now, what would happen in 5, 10, 20 years when they actually have a nuclear weapon, when they actually have more capabilities, and it's not even a nuclear, they were building up their missile shield that if you even try to attack them, they would have unleashed hell and fire and fury around any of their neighbors.

32:41So, yes, it sucks. Yes, gas prices are high. Yes, inflation is higher. Yes, core inflation and CPI is higher. But I will ask you this. If we didn't do it now, how much worse would it have been 5, 10, 20 years from now? That's what I keep going back to. Yes, we need to finish the job. Yes, we need to clean this up. You can say that, Adam. But I'm coming back to how this all started. We're figuring out how this is ending. Jeff said the best thing. Jeff said the best thing. If I lose this, if I lose that, if I lose that, guess what? It's all worth it. Guess what, folks? You didn't become the president.

33:18President Trump did. And by the way, guess what? President Trump can't say, why is the media talking smack about me and the podcasters? That's what happens when you're the president. Everybody gets to talk trash. And you get to say, agree, disagree, fake news, whatever. But if you're making this massive type of a bold position that you're going to put the Iranian regime out, guess what this works like? If you do it, your face is up there with Mount Rushmore type of conversations and you did something that all these other politicians talked about, you close the deal. If you don't do it, AOC is the president in 2028.

33:56It's that simple for me. And let me simplify it for you. I'm going to say this to you one more time. If he pulls it off, J.D. or Ruby are president in 2028. If he pulls it off, one of those two guys will be president. and probably more Rubio if he pulls it off. You understand why it's going to be probably more Rubio if he pulls it off? If he pulls it off, if he doesn't pull it off, here you go. Socialism's here in America. And you know why socialism's going to be here in America? Because if this goes to eight, if this goes to ten, if even conservatives and farmers, here's a story from farmers, and I'm going to come to you with this, Jeff.

34:30Farmers who voted for Trump talk about impact of high cost for Iran war tariffs we're all just in survival mode is what farmers are saying. Okay. So, you know, we need these guys. These are people that are not wanting a lot of recognition. They just do it because they love their jobs. Matt Bell, 52 years old, North Carolina farmer who grows soybeans, corn, and wheat and raises cattle on more than 1 ,000 acres, voted for Trump, and now says soaring fuel, fertilizer, and equipment price are crushing them. I've done this for 34 years. I've never worried and stressed like this. I have in the last year, we've cut everything we can cut.

35:01There's nothing left to cut. the war with Iran and the Houthi Saudi fighting the squeezed global fuel supplies. Diesel average about 640 a gallon nationwide. Nearly double a year ago. Bell's combined burns roughly$600 of diesel a day. He blew through$35 ,000 of annual fuel budget in August. Tariffs attitude, everything that we touch has gone up, he said, noting that China's 10 % retaliatory tariff on soybeans has left the market in limbo. Bell now says the administration miscalculated the war. I think we've been misled, and agriculture was going to be in the forefront right now. That has not happened.

35:34A Republican, he plans to split his ticket in November. We're fighting for survival, and we're running out of options. So your thoughts when you hear farmers going through this because of the economy. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think the way you approach this, the macroeconomic end of it, is we can sit here and argue about why, whether it was a good idea, whether it wasn't. It happened. You're exactly right. If you want the election, you get to do what you want when you become president. And the idea, the taco stuff, that was all garbage. I mean, Trump has said from the very beginning, I'm going to do this.

36:02And I don't think he's going to back down. I think he sees a pathway forward. And there is enough indication out there that, to get off topic a little bit here, there's enough indication out there that he could actually pull this off, that the Iranian regime isn't as strong as it appears to be, and that maybe the Iranians would, but that doesn't matter. Trump says, I'm going to do this. There are no red lines here. Diesel hits 10, cost of doing business, as far as Trump is concerned. So what we have to do as analysts is say, okay, this is the reality we're working with. What happens from there?

36:31And so farmers are saying, we've cut back to bare bones. We can't handle$10 diesel without raising prices. So prices are going to go up for food. That's going to happen. What happens then? Well, most Americans aren't going to see an increase in their incomes, which means they're going to have to cut back, as Tom was saying. Where are they going to cut back? We've already seen numbers come out of places like Mexico. Tourism in Mexico has absolutely crashed in some places by 20%. And a lot of that crash and that decline in Mexican tourism, Americans. Americans are not flying to Mexico. Why? Because they first of all realize that gas prices are high today, but food prices are going to be high tomorrow.

37:07And then food prices and some other things are going to be higher tomorrow. That's how you get to the recession. So the argument here isn't whether or not this farmer is right or whether Trump is right in doing what he did. He did what he did, and he's going to keep doing it. So we now have to figure out what the macroeconomic consequences are. And this farmer is telling us what the macroeconomic consequences will be. I guess I'm just curious what you're saying, you know, pull it off. Trump would pull it off. What does that even mean? Like what does pull it off mean? What is the benchmark that people could look at and say, okay, now we've finished it and it's done?

37:38Because looking myself, looking at it, I mean, I have no idea. I have no idea what that would even be. There are three things that I think have become crystal clear that the administration defines as success. One is the nuclear program, which is less uncertain. I think the nuclear program is going to be a done deal easy. The second thing is control the Strait of Hormuz. They're never going to go back. They're never going to let Iran have the control of the Strait of Hormuz. This is a we need to decide this issue for now and forever. You know, when they were talking earlier about the Memorandum of Understanding and Iran, that was all just, you know, political.

38:08So Hormuz has to be wrestled. It has to turn into some kind of international control. And the third thing is, the more contentious one, is a regime collapse. So what they're betting on is that by squeezing Iran economically, which, by the way, is not a fun thing. There's a lot of people in Iran who are suffering. But the tactic here is to squeeze the Iranian system economically so that the Iranians rise up, the moderate factions in Iran rise up. They throw off the IRGC, which the IRGC is in a war of survival, which makes it even more difficult. But that's the three things that need to happen for Trump to say we've got this done.

38:42I think that he is shown. Push back what you got. Yeah, I guess it really comes down to the three things you're talking about. They sound great, but all of those things sound like they need to be monitored by America to continue afterwards. Because what's the point of doing this? I mean, again, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan. I agree. No, I'm not arguing for it. I'm saying this is what Trump, I think this is absolutely clear. Maybe it is. You know, really. I mean, unless you're keeping American interests, Americans over there to monitor all these things, how do you stop them from creating? Let me ask you this.

39:12because I think millions of people side with you, and they have the same concern that you have. And the world, if you're a leader of a country and you have your base that voted for you, supported for you, that are now concerned about this war that's starting, we don't want another endless war. What could happen with this now that would make you happy? What would happen for you to say, you know what? Respect, cannot believe the president. I never thought he would be able to pull this off. Give me two or three things that could happen, specifically with Iran that will make a 30-year-old like you happy?

39:43Getting out. So that's one. I think that's the biggest thing. Is that the only one? Really, yeah, I would say. So let me ask you another question. So let's just say in the next 6 to 12 months, Reagan tried this in the past in 1988, the whole operating praying mantis. George Bush tried to do this with the IRGC coups force when he did that in 2007 against Soleimani. Obama put sanctions on Soleimani. We know Trump killed Soleimani, the number two guy. So a lot of people have tried to do this with that. What happens if in the next 6, 12, 18 months, Iran, the IRGC toppled. They're gone. Regime change.

40:19That entire force is out. Okay? Pre-2028 election going into it, that's been done. What does that do to a guy like you? Does it change your position at all? Potentially. It just really looks forward to the future. Like when Saddam Hussein was killed, you know, you had people in Iraq, in Baghdad, celebrating. You know, at first they were celebrating everything that was going on. They were very happy about it. But, you know, then a few weeks later, a few months afterwards, you look at Iraq and the people are not happy anymore and they're not happy now with everything that has happened. I think the issue here isn't that everybody would agree with you.

40:51If Trump pulls it off, everybody would celebrate. The issue is, again, the pull it off. That's it. The issue here is two things. I think even if he pulls it off, there's going to be people that are going to say, yeah, but, you know, what's the big deal? He didn't do anything. So So when you're a leader, you have to understand as a leader, I am never going to win Will over. The only thing Will wants for me to finish the war and move on. And guess what? And Trump wins me over in other things. No, I get that. But what I'm saying is in this topic, I'm not going to win Will over and these millions of people, whether I pull it off or not.

41:21No, I think I'm going to go do it anyway. I think what a lot of people have, and I'm going to speak for you, Will, if you don't mind. I think the issue here is. More eloquently than me. No, the issue here is can he? Because we've heard this before. We heard it, I mean, the 1990s, the no-fly zones in Iraq. That was supposed to put pressure on Saddam Hussein. We've heard this before. Iraq itself, we took over Iraq. Like you said, they were celebrating. The Iraqis were happy. And what happened? Two decades of just chaos, hardship, and heartache, right? So the problem here is it's very difficult for the average person to see this as a likely probability.

41:54I don't blame them. I don't blame them. Nobody does. Nobody should. I still don't think it's a high probability. but at least I think there's a plausible enough pathway that Trump says we can potentially pull off regime change. Incredibly difficult. He put to pull off regime change. You know, there were moments where, you know, my confidence was higher because you had guys like Reza Pahlavi that were saying there's going to be defectors in the military. None of that happened. Okay. In the military leaders are going to be, you know, they're going to come out and they're going to turned against and all of a sudden, that did not happen.

42:28When they turned off the internet, you couldn't see what happened to Iran, the amount of people they slaughtered and killed. So that scared the crap out of a lot of parents that said, where are you going? Stay home. No more protesting. Stay home. Where are you going, Will? Stay home. Stay home. You're not going anywhere because they're worried they're going to kill your kids next. So the IRGC suffocated the people that had momentum because it takes the Iranian people to make this happen. It's not going to be anybody else but the Iranian people. I think the Iranian people right now are sitting there saying, look, man, another time we tried to take over the IRGC and we failed again, we just have to suck it up.

42:59I need a job to pay my bills. I can't feed my kids. I think that's where they are right now. That's the difference. That's the one difference that they never did in, say, Iraq in the 1990s, the economic blockade. I think the economic blockade is having a much bigger impact than people realize. Besant, the Navy sitting out there saying no ships coming in and out of Iran. The economic blockade is really decimating the Iranian economy. So that's the key difference. You saw this article by Breitbart where J.D. Vance talks about the first phase of the war, second phase of the war, basically says, first phase is to destroy the nuclear program and to destroy their conventional military.

43:34Check. Second phase is to ensure that they're not able to rebuild. They're in that process. And then Scott Besant, we've been calling him Besant, but it's Besant. Besant, yeah. You know, a little flavor to it. He said, the U.S. is waging the greatest economic isolation campaign in the history of the world against Iran through Operation Economic Outcast. Shout out to Andre 3000 right there. But I think they're going to do this. I don't know when. I don't know how long it's going to take. But I'm a believer in our military. It's at least a possibility. That's the thing. What I'm saying to you is there's certain – okay.

44:08So who remembers Friendster? Friendster.com. Yeah, that was before MySpace. Do you know what Friendster was? No. Do you remember MySpace? Yeah, of course. Do you know the first social media site ever was Friendster.com? Oh, yeah. it wasn't MySpace. MySpace, I think, was the second or third. But Friendster.com came up with this concept of, hey, let's create a social media site. 24 years ago, they came out like, hey, we're going to build this thing, and people are going to be social networking. Everyone's like, I don't know about that. I don't know if we're going to be doing this. 8.2 million users is what they had, right?

44:39Then others were like, well, listen, this Friendster idea was pretty good. They got 8.2 million users. Let's do MySpace. And then this guy named, what's his name, Bill or Tom or Tom? Tom. Tom. Tom is his name. The white shirt. With the white shirt. Yeah, Tom comes out with MySpace. Ends up selling it for half a billion dollars, right? Yeah. And Tom Anderson was his name. So they get, you know, whatever amount of users that they get. Then what follows MySpace? Facebook. Facebook is now what? The trillion dollar, multi-trillion dollar company? The rest is history. No one knows Friendster, okay? Some know MySpace.

45:10Everybody knows Zuck. What's the point? The point is, sometimes when you're doing the impossible, if you're, you know, many times people will say, this is the guy that went bankrupt. This is the guy that built a business and went bankrupt. This is the guy that started this and went bankrupt. Look at him. He's poor. He's got nothing going on. He may have worked very hard. He may have had the right idea. He may have had the right thing. But he may have been a little too early for the times of being ready for it. But what he did is he left the fingerprints of what things to not mess with for the next guy to pull it off.

45:47I don't know if this is making sense or not. Yeah, he set the tone. So meaning what Trump is doing here, you know what he may end up becoming? You know what he may end up becoming? The OG of how to deal with the guy. He may end up becoming the guy that sets up the ways not to do it on what to face that the next guy comes and is able to pull it off. I don't know. But if he doesn't pull it off, I'm just telling you this. if he doesn't pull it off, AOC is the president in 2028. You mean a Democrat? A socialist will be a president. Not a Democrat. Hopefully America's not a Democrat. But AOC is not a socialist.

46:19I think Michelle Obama. Just ask her. Michelle Obama. Yeah, not a socialist. Seriously. Not somebody who is a socialist. Let me say, guys, if you like what we had to say today, contact me on Friendster. Yeah, for sure. You're my top eight. Go contact them on Friendster. Okay, let's go to the next story. Next story I want to get to while we're going through this is two stories. that kind of go together. One, Forbes comes out and announces that 580 billionaires are too poor to be on the Forbes 400 list. Let me say that one more time. There's 580 people in America that are billionaires, but they're not rich enough to be on the Forbes 590, that are not rich enough to be on the Forbes 400 list.

47:01Imagine how pissed off you would be if that was you. So some people read that and they're like, wait a minute, Who gives a shit if these guys are not? Why should I care for you? Poor you that you're not in the Forbes 400. And in simultaneously, the same story, another story comes out. I'm trying to find a 590 story. I don't know what page that went on. Am I missing this here where it's at? There it is. Record-breaking page 11. Let me read this, and then I'll go to what other number came up at the same time. And I want to ask you guys what you think about this. So just having 10 figures is not enough.

47:31The minimum net worth to make it on the Forbes 400 list today. Ready? you have to be worth$4.4 billion to be on there. $600 million more than a year ago, leaving a record 590 billionaires too poor to make the list up from 500 in 2025. So that means that's an increase of 90. Every notable name who fell short, Oprah Winfrey, Media and Entertainment, $3.4 billion, not Forbes 400. Roblox founder,$3.4 billion, not in it. Sam Altman,$3.3 billion, he's not in it. Tim Cook,$3 billion, too poor to be in a Forbes 400. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss,$2.9 billion. Jay-Z,$2.8 billion. Taylor Swift,$2 billion.

48:10Kim Kardashian,$1.9 billion. LeBron James,$1.4 billion. Sanjay Mehorta from Micron,$1.2 billion. Arnold Schwarzenegger, apparently his net worth is$1.2 billion. Good for him. Beyonce,$1 billion. Dre,$1 billion. He got a few other people there. Now, while this story comes out, this other story comes out, I hope I can find this one. If you guys can point me to it, you know which one I'm talking about. Americans' income hits record, but lower earners lose ground. What page is that one on? There it is, page four. Let me read this to you, and then, Jeff, I'm going to come to you, then, Tom, I'll come to you right afterwards.

48:44U.S. household income hit a record in 2025 with real median income rising 2.6 % to$87 ,000. Highest inflation adjusted level and census record began in 1967 while official poverty level to 10.2%, But the gains were uneven income among the wealthiest 10 % of the American rose 1.7%, while the bottom 10 % saw no significant change. And the top five of the top fifth of households captured 52.4 % of all income versus 3%. So, you know, Jeff, the concept of rich getting richer, poor getting poor, is that what's happening here or is there something deeper we're not looking at? No, that's exactly it. The economy doesn't work and people realize that.

49:27I mean, the simplest way to think about it is, okay, if you have 100 people, and 99 people, their income is 50 ,000, and it goes up 1 % to 50 ,500. The 100th person has income of a million, and it goes up to a million, million one. The aggregate statistic looks good because the entire income, average income goes up. But if you polled those people, what would end up happening? One person would say the economy is great, and 99 people would say the economy sucks. So it's the difference between averages and what people actually experience. And this is a real phenomenon. It has been happening, especially since 2021 and 2022, really the lockdowns.

50:03Ever since the lockdowns, it has been, they call it a K-shaped, Chris Martinson called it an I-shaped economy, which is probably a better representation of it. People at the top are doing well. People at the top have no problems. They are able to shelter their wealth because they have access to financial markets and leverage and liquidity that nobody else does. If your only asset is your labor, your labor has been devalued since 2022 in a substantial way. So you've been made poor and people realize that. And so we have all these statistics that say if you're at the top, you're doing well. And if you're at the bottom, you're not doing well.

50:35The problem is there are more people going into the bottom than there is going to the top. So while there may be 590 billionaires who don't make the Forbes list, how many thousands and millions of Americans are falling into the bottom part of the economy? Well, if you ask Americans, they'll tell you. I brought a couple of charts here. I don't know, Connor, if you can bring them up. So this is the one reason why Republicans really need to be on alert for the election here. Americans' view of the economy is exactly the opposite of what you hear in the media. So you hear Kevin Warsh talk about how resilient the economy is.

51:06Americans, they want to flip him the finger and say, what the fuck are you talking about? It's the University of Michigan Consumer Survey. This is a survey that goes back into the 1960s. They've been doing monthly surveys since the late 1970s. Americans' assessment of their own current financial situation today is equal to the worst levels of each past recession that we've had since the 1970s. That's how Americans think about the economy, not just their own financial situation, what they think about the lack of jobs. How do they measure this? How is this measured? It's measured the amount of people who say that their financial situation is better minus the amount of people who say their financial situation is worse.

51:42Plus minus. So it's a plus minus chart. So what we're saying is many more, a vast majority more people think that they're worse off than a year ago. And if you look at the other charts, it's unemployment. It's income reasons for what we just saw in the other chart. Every single one of these measures coming from America. And this cuts across political divides, demographics. This is widespread change. Americans' assessment of the economy, their place in the economy is at lows that we associate with the worst parts of the recession. So then I got a question for you. If you go on this here and if you look at from 2010, 2008, 9, which we know what happened, 8, 9, market crash right there, the bottom that I'm looking at.

52:19Massive drop off. That's post-Bush. Then you have Obama comes in and it goes up. And if you go to 16, Trump comes in, spikes all the way up. Then you got 2020, 2021. Biden comes in. Massive drop off. And it goes all the way down. And Trump comes in 2024, so 2025, 2026. it drops off so a part of this how much of this you put on him how much of this you put on oh zero this is not trump this isn't this is not well so who is this you can argue about it's the massive drop off there is actually under the first trump administration that's during covid right down so you could you could make the case that you know the lockdowns were the original sin the cares act the massive explosion of government spending that's a lot of it too but this this is this transcends politics this is not partisanship it's not a biden economy versus a trump economy and Trump fixes the Biden economy.

53:09It's just the fact that we made a whole bunch of mistakes. So a president cannot do anything to positively impact this, is what you're saying? What I'm saying is it was baked in five years ago. And Trump's mistake is the same mistake that politicians made all throughout the world was saying this was Biden's economy. I'm going to fix Biden's economy. Remember, Trump came in office and said, I'm going to build the greatest economy in the world. He never should have said that because it's not in his hands to do that. It wasn't as simple as if we replace Biden with Trump, the economy fixes itself.

53:37Whose hand is it in? It's whoever decided we should lock everything down and, you know, spend all that money on CARES Act and then the follow up of follow up bills where the government expanded itself exponentially. So more House, more the House of Representatives, Congress. I think at that time, you know, the CARES Act was a bipartisan act. I think everybody in 2020 has their hands dirty, whether it be the Trump administration and then Biden just continued it. We had a rapid, massive expansion in the government in 21 and 22 that never returned. The emergency is over, but government spending is as high as it was back when we were doing the pandemic.

54:14Can you do me a favor, go back to the previous chart that he showed, the plus minus, this one right here. So if you look at it, I wish that thing was out. Oh, okay, it's gone. So 2008, 2009, we know where that is. Today, I mean, to have those two comparisons together, what's the other one? 0304 and then you got 91 92 and then you have 1980 that's carter where interest rates were 16 17 18 but you had the double dip in 81 is there a correlation you see between all those or no each of them is a different reasoning well they're business cycles so these are recession cycles so the reason why confidence starts to go back up is because the business cycle hits its bottom and it starts to go back up you think we hit the bottom no that's the that's what we're just talking about$10 per gallon diesel guarantees we're not at the bottom.

55:03Tom. And I'm at eight and the tree falls. What I see here. You're at eight and the tree falls. At$8 diesel, the tree falls. I think the tree is leaning right now. So what Americans are saying is the economy is bad today. His stats he brought up, Americans are not taking short-term vacations to Mexico. And what we're seeing this summer, they're not taking even shorter-term vacations just to drive to Six Flags. We're seeing it. So you're saying Catalina is going to get a lot of business, Catalina Island and... Right. If you go back to this... Catalina wine mixer? Here's what I think people need to pay attention to.

55:39What you need to pay attention to is that the prior chart that Jeff showed that means that right now two things happen on COVID. We shut down the economy and people were unable to make money and save, number one. And number two, we printed a bunch of money in the process and inflated the piss out of everything that was there. And then - Except labor. Except labor. Except their wages. And so when they went back to work, everything was way up, including houses. We started migration in America. What we had with COVID is, I would argue, has been almost as cataclysmic as 2008. And in 2008, we just didn't see it that way in terms of the net economic change that happened to the facility and situation of the average American consumer.

56:26That's my headline. They were paying for the mistakes of 2020 and 2026. So it was the big market crash in 08. And I look at print, COVID lockdown, savings. Those three things came together and were as bad as the crash of 08. and then the government kept spending at the same level in terms of the deficit, which was the trailing. I put those four things together. That's why this thing goes from 22 to 26. That's why the consumer's there. Well, the thing is that you don't see this. You look at the economic statistics, and they look relatively decent, which is why Jay Powell and now Kevin Worsk gets on TV and says the economy's resilient because you look at the aggregate statistics, they look okay.

57:06But what Americans are saying is, okay, the numbers might look good, but that's not my experience. I experienced something completely different. And their 401ks, their IRAs, if they haven't withdrawn, are OK because of the index-driven market. OK, fine. But at home, just trying to take care of the increase in price in energy, insurance. I mean, never mind energy. Go look at what happened to insurance since 2020. Health insurance, home insurance, car insurance. Go look around. But this also explains why Trump did, first of all, the Trump accounts, right? Because most people don't have access to the stock market.

57:39and people who do have access is mostly through their retirement assets, which is not spendable income. And it's also why he brought up the$5 ,000 dividend at the midterm convention. Because they know what's coming. They know that Americans' view of the economy is not good. I'm dubious on the second, but I'm with him on the Trump accounts. I think he's saying, okay, guys, let's build savings for everybody born in America starting now. I don't think that's a bad idea. I'm not with the 5 ,000. Will, thoughts? Well, right now you have millennials my age versus baby boomers. At the age of 35, on average, baby boomers owned about 21 % of this nation's wealth.

58:17Now you have millennials at about the age of 35, on average, own only 3 % of the nation's wealth. Is it that high? It doesn't seem like it. Yeah, it might be even lower now, this step. But that is absolutely insane to me. The value that people have in this country who are my age, I mean, we own basically nothing. You will own nothing and be happy, as they tell you. But in, what is it, 2005, the median price of a house was 200. You're comparing boomers with millennials? Yeah. What is the average age of a millennial? This is 30. Yeah, this would be about 35. I'm actually not surprised with those numbers.

58:49I'm not surprised with those numbers. Compound interest is scary. Yeah, but the problem is you don't – Let me just finish my thought. I'm going to give you a point. Compound interest for me is scary. What happens? Scary. You know, I would watch a guy that would come to the office at 8 o 'clock in sales, leave at 10, and he would make 20 calls more than his peer, and he would send cards to all his clients and the other guy wouldn't. In one year, they made the same money. In the second year, the guy would make 10 % more income. Third year, 25%. By the fifth year, he's making 200 % more income. And it's not even close.

59:30And the other guy would say, I can't believe it. He got lucky. I said, no, man, he just would make 20 more calls than you would. And compound interest is truly a real thing. Now, let me go to the other side. What I believe I'm talking about, guys that are under 30 years old, is I'd like to see something where we don't tax anybody under the age of 30 for the first$500 ,000 they make. They keep all of it. No federal income tax. Meaning, you make$300, it's your money. You make$200, it's your money. You make$100, 100 % is your money. You make$600, you pay taxes on$100 ,000 of it. Why? Because if in the business, our guys, I was in an insurance company, that they changed the comp plan to benefit guys that have been around for 20 years, not benefit the newest guy that was getting recruited.

1:00:18And I would always say, if the opportunity is no longer good for the newest person, you no longer have a good business. The newest person needs to have the same opportunity to make a lot of money as the guy that was there 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. We don't have that today. So for me, if we can find a way that somebody is getting into the marketplace, zero taxes, upwards of a half a billion, half a million dollars they make, let them keep that money. We need to increase people getting married, having kids, buying a house, and they simply don't have that today. And that's a scary thought. If the incentive doesn't benefit the youth, you have a very – and if they pay a price for boomers saying, no, no, no, no, no, don't give up my benefits.

1:00:54No, no, no, no, no. And no politician is going to run up there and say, hey, we need to raise the retirement age for boomers five more years. Nobody would get elected with that. No one. Not a single soul, even though they may be right, not a single soul would win a campaign if they went there and say retirement age needs to be increased. Nobody. Even right now if I said this, look how many people are going to get pissed off at me. I'm telling you, look how many people are going to be like, oh, you know, screw you. You don't know. You're talking from a place of, you know, you made the money and did this.

1:01:19I grew up in a family where my mom and dad were poor. My dad worked at a cashier at a 99-cent store in Inglewood, California. You know, yesterday I'm talking to my knee. You know, I'm doing physical therapy because of the ACL. My dad is sitting there saying he reminded of a story about 14 years old, how he's scared he was about me because a guy named Vladimir Alhase, who's a great pastor in Torlach, San Jose area. His father was one of my heroes. And when I was 14 years old, trouble teenager, I joined a basketball league called the New Century City Basketball Association in Echo Park. We played with Blood, Crib, Diamond.

1:01:56We played with everybody. TVR, Tunerville. You tell them, 18, we played with everybody. All the troubled kids were playing basketball together. And then my dad's telling the story to this guy, Carson, and I'm just listening to him. He says, I remember one day we're at Las Vegas, and we took him there, and my son didn't come up until 2 o 'clock in the morning. I'm in the street. We got into a fight with five guys from New York, guns out, and I'm hanging out with a couple of these guys in a car, Burbank Thrasse. The guy's driving a car at 14, 15 years old. His dad's Cadillac. My life's going this way.

1:02:24My life's going this way. And this guy got a hold of me and changed my life. So I know what it is to be poor, and it sucks. I know what it is to go through the price. I went to the military. I was hoping I would do 20 years because they gave me a pension plan. My plan was I was going to go do 20 years in the military. I understand that pain. Today, we've got to figure out a way to get the youth to have incentives, to have kids, to get married, and to buy a house. And we can't just look the other way and say, look how many billionaires we're producing. They've got to feel it. But at the same time, we have to find a way to say, look, everybody's got to pull their own little red wagon.

1:02:59There's got to be something that everybody's got to give up here as we're going through this next phase. And spending needs to kind of lower a little bit. Spending the amount of things that we're spending money on right now, it's getting a little bit out of control. So I'll come to you, then I'll come to Jeff. Yeah, I mean, you can definitely, I mean, before 1912, there was no federal income tax. Exactly. I mean, I'm totally for all of that. But the amount of expenditure we got right now, the amount of how big the government's ballooned into to cut the whole thing. They tried doge. Look what happened.

1:03:23Yeah. The richest man in the world got fired. Yeah, exactly. You know, but the compound. In a blaze of glory, by the way. The compound interest. When him and Trump got into it. Yeah. Yeah, the compound interest. I mean, I dropped out of college to move to Los Angeles to go and work for PragerU. This was in 2017. You crushed it, by the way. Thank you. Thank you. And there weren't conservative influencers or conservative people like that. It was a completely new thing and I saw what was going on in the world and I said, man, I'm going to work really hard. I lived in a horrible bachelor apartment in Hollywood, California, where I'd wake up with cockroaches crawling on my face at 4am, eating Ritz crackers and turkey with no kitchen.

1:03:57And so I get that, working hard and putting in that. And you can, of course, make something of yourself. This is America. But there is no doubt that there aren't more hurdles today for young people than any other time, I think, in American history. I mean, just looking at minimum wage laws. I mean, minimum wage laws are something that keep people out of actually, you know, making money in the future. You know, it's not letting businesses decide how much they're going to actually pay people, making it especially hard for black Americans to get low entry jobs to then move up in the world. All these different hurdles that are making it very difficult.

1:04:28Give me more hurdles. What else is it? Hurdles for the youth? Yeah, well, one thing, you know, the hardest it's ever been. Yeah. I mean, one thing we're talking about housing, right? And one of the reasons why housing has gotten so expensive. You know, it's not the only reason, but you have these big hedge funds coming in and buying up single family homes in this country. Right. And if you're doing that, then you're making it so, I mean, how am I, it's obviously going to inflate the price of the law. They change a few months back that they can't do that anymore. And, you know, to kind of prevent them from pushing the way, cause they're raising the price of where everybody's sitting there.

1:04:55So I'm just going to be renting. There's even a story in here about just renting. What else would you say outside of that? Well, the biggest one has got to be illegal immigration. If you have two houses that are built and someone cuts in line and comes and gets government benefits and says, well, I need a house too, of course, that's going to push the supply up. So illegal immigration, the hedge funds, the not really good jobs for young people that are making them passionate and creative people, you know, they're just replaceable people and in stupid email jobs all day in some big techie city.

1:05:23I think the biggest problem is young men, especially right now, don't feel like they have a lot of purpose or meaning in their lives. And if you take that away from a civilization, the entire thing crashes. You know, even if, you know, we have all this kind of like high level economic stuff and things like that but really it's going to come down to the young men finding something of value to do in their lives otherwise what do you do with all of them jeff it's the opportunity you guys don't have the opportunity compound interest you're exactly right and the the issue here is that millennials and gen z two generations now have never had the opportunity to do what you're talking it's not a case of they're not working hard enough that's not it at all and so i brought some more charts because i've got charts for everything there is some of that, I will say.

1:06:03Maybe. But they're not working hard. I'll talk to people and they'll be like, man, this guy came in, he thought he could just work from home every day and not show up. I'm going to tell you, there are people my age who did the same thing. The boomers complained about Generation X. It's old as human nature. The kids are always bad, right? But this is a macroeconomic thing and it goes back to 2008. If you look at the chart here, which shows you income. Income fell off trend in 2008 and never went back. To the point that we're now $5 trillion behind that trend. That's$5 trillion in real price-adjusted income that never happened.

1:06:37That's income. Baby boomers got their jobs, their incomes, their retirement savings, their houses. They got all that stuff. After 2008, things were different. People your generation, they are in the bottom part of the cave because there isn't jobs and income. So you don't have the chance. You don't have a chance to build your career in the same way. You don't have a chance to buy a house at age 28, 29, or 30 and build your equity because everything comes with equity. People who have entered the economy after 2008 have experienced a very, very different life than people from before 2008. And the numbers show this.

1:07:14The problem is nobody knows this because all we've heard since 2008 is that everything is just fine. We also have to go into the college question, because the price of college in this country has gone way past the point of inflation for how much college. And there's that, you know, and then you can't. What do you get out of it? You also can't file bankruptcy on a student loan from the government. Tom. Yeah. And if you take a careful look right here, great chart, Jeff. Let's see if we could look at the slope of the line from the spike down in 2020, the COVID. If you draw a new line on that, Pat, it's even flatter than the 2.9 percent.

1:07:47Worse than that, it's actually rolling over. It's correct. it's not 2.2 percent it is flat it is dead flat so now you go from 3.1 compounded 2.9 but if you look careful after covid and you adjust it it's almost flat so you know this is this is the reality when that's why i call it you know after covid i say it was as bad as 2008 but we didn't see it that way because covid was over we took off the mask we went back outside we were working again. And the market was up, which was protecting 401ks and IRAs. It was, it is, it continues to, but it's flat. And so that explains why Americans think that this is as bad as every recession, because the data shows that's actually the case.

1:08:29And the stock market has made it worse. And that's where a lot of the frenzy over socialism comes from, because the stock market's at all-time highs, are very near all-time highs. Yet most Americans experience this economy. So you think, okay, if this is a booming economy where the stock market's at record highs, I'm opting out. I need something different. I need something that actually works for me. Look, I might be the center on this one. I think this is the greatest country in the world. I think we have the greatest economy in the world. I think when we talk about, like, what's the famous Churchill quote?

1:09:02Democracy is the worst form of government except for everything else has been tried. Pick a country in the world you would move to with all your complaints about America. Go ahead. Well, this is everyone wants to complain. Well, inflation is a little high. The cost of housing. I get it. I'm in the same country as you guys paying the same price. But I hear me out. But I think at the end of the day, it's like, where else are you going? Like you're not going to trade all your issues for America, whatever it is, for any place in the world. So listen, I believe in personal responsibility. I believe in personal finance.

1:09:33what I had to do just like pbd I was a south beach nightlife party boy that knew everybody and was having a great time in my life but I was broke as hell so I had to go basically move out of Miami move into a house with five of my buddies I paid nothing in rent the cockroach story the ramen noodle story and my first year in business I made five thousand dollars I stuck it out I was making a million cold calls a month next year I made a hundred thousand dollars then the economy busted in 2008 and you know what? I had to figure it out. The bottom line for me was this one major thing. You can't save your way to becoming a millionaire.

1:10:10You have to own assets. So at some point you're going to basically have the tipping point where you're going to say, alright, you know, what did... You pointed at me, Tom. What's up? I was waiting for him to finish. Oh, I thought you were pointing at me because of a text. Go ahead. No, sorry. To me, and this is a weird analogy, but I've been watching a lot of Thomas Sow lately, the great Thomas Sow. He said, there's no solutions for anything. There's only trade-offs. So what's the trade-off? Okay. So maybe you're not going to get your own apartment, buddy. Maybe you're not going to buy a house, buddy.

1:10:42Maybe you're going to have to get a roommate. Cool. Maybe you're not going to drive a BMW. You're going to drive a Kia. All good. Maybe you're not going to Taco Tuesday every Tuesday and you're going to eat at home. It's all good. You're still living in America. And I'm so sorry that we're going to have a moment of silence for for jay-z and beyonce and taylor swift and oprah that they're not in the forbes 500 but they still own assets and they're still billionaires and you can be a millionaire too if you just work work hard work earn save and invest adam i see where you're coming from but some of that argument is why people get so pissed off yeah at that the generation above them well i think what pat said what do you mean i agree with you hang on i agree with you i agree with you it's the greatest country I agree that there's a great economy but the reason Pat brought up his point about hey under the age of 30 we won't tax you up to 500 I want to help people with a ramp and you know Jeff talks about we need wage growth I talk about wage growth as well we agree you know dramatically on that point and one of the ways you can give people your wage growth is you can give them spending growth the ability to spend not on credit not on credit cards which are at 1.4 trillion right now and you've got BNPL that's strangling people because they decided to use that.

1:11:57What he's talking about is let's in this economy, in this situation, what if we help these people under 30 to get a ramp up on it? By the way, not to cut you off, I think it's a great idea, but how soon is that idea going to be implemented? A year? Five years? Ten years? Twenty years? Let's live in reality today, though. Wait a minute. It's like, okay, Edison, you're going to invent the light bulb, but how long is it going to take? You have to start someplace. I agree, but that's not going to help somebody pay the rent today. an idea that says, I've got an idea, we've got a problem, why don't we get together?

1:12:25I love the idea. I fully support the idea. Even when he brought it up to Ben Shapiro, he loved the idea. That's not going to pay your rent today. So what can be done today? Well, you're talking about Thomas Sowell, and one of the great stats that he had, which might not be as relevant before or after COVID, was that 25 or you have like 25 people, percent of people in the bottom quarter of economics. By the end of their life, 75 % of those people will have been in the top quarter of the economics in this country at some point in their life. Economic mobility. Exactly. That's why they say the middle class is shrinking.

1:12:58It's like, well, if you actually look deeper, it's because a lot of the middle class entered the upper class because of compound interest, right? But if you don't have the opportunity to get a compound interest, you're stuck in the bottom. Jeff, Jeff, I'm sorry, though. So go ahead. What's your solution? You just sold massive crisis. If I'm a 22-year-old watching this, I'm depressed right now. Wait a minute. But I shouldn't be. You should not be. Would you tell your son that? I'm sorry. I'm not wired that way. I don't speak that language. I don't relate to that language. So here's my question for you.

1:13:31If you're telling me that it's the shittiest time to be in, give me ideas. Go ahead. What can I do? First of all, I want to address one thing first. No, no, no, no, sir. You address his question first. Hang on. You're not putting me first. This is not a U.S.-only problem. In fact, the same chart can be found everywhere else around the world. Yeah, but we care about the United States. I don't care what's going on. But what I'm saying is that this is not strictly a U.S. problem. What I want to know from you is. Yeah, how do we fix this? Yeah, give me that. Because any time I hear people that are just selling crisis, crisis, it's like when you work in a company and you've got employees, that's not working.

1:14:03This is not working. Okay, great. Give me this. I think we should change our benefits and do this. Okay, fantastic. Let's have the conversation. So walk me through your ideas. If you had influence, what would you do? All right, go back to that. Can you pull up the chart again? Yeah, let's go to it. Which one? The 5.9? Right there. 4.9, go for it. It's circled. What happened in 2008? Because that's where you see the - Quantitative easing. What happened to cause that? The 2008. What was the 2008 crisis? Heavy borrowing. Because look at what this chart is telling you. Yeah. Something broke in 2008.

1:14:36Okay. Now, the reason the socialists are winning is because they say the same thing. They say something broke in 2008 and it was free market capital. Sure. So we're going to replace it with socialism. They're correct about the one part. Obviously way wrong about the other part. What broke in 2008 to the point that the entire global economy changed, the entire nature of the global economy changed after 2008? This is the problem. Nobody knows what happened in 2008. What broke in 2008 was the entire global monetary system. It's the same thing that happened in the 1930s. Why was the Great Depression a Great Depression?

1:15:06Because the monetary system that existed before 1929 broke down permanently. In fact, this is the reason why Ben Bernanke was famous. He said, look, after 1929, 1930, the banking system got broken. It never recovered. We never had a recovery. Same exact thing happened here. In 2008, the monetary system that we had, the Eurodollar system, why I call it Eurodollar University, broke. And it didn't break on a temporary basis. It broke in a way that was permanent. Quantitative easing didn't fix it. The Federal Reserve's zero-interest rate policy didn't fix it. It was a permanent rupture in the global monetary system, which is why you see this chart everywhere around the world.

1:15:44So the answer is to unbreak what happened in 2008, which argues for rejiggering the monetary system so that it actually functions in the way that we need it to. So that's the solution. The problem is getting people to that solution. I'm so sorry to interrupt. Wait a minute. Okay. So how do you fix it? How do you fix it? There are certain things you can't unfix, right? Exactly. Okay. So now if that's. But you're not going to like the answer. But I actually want to know what you're going to say because the only thing I care about is – well, I'll tell you what I care about. I want to know how you fix it.

1:16:16I want to hear what you're going to say. How we fix it is we allow things like cryptocurrencies and digital currencies to develop new systems. The problem is we go – global economic history goes through these periods of cycles. So before the 1930s, we had a period of – 30-year period of tremendous prosperity. People call it the roaring 20s, but it's actually the zeros, the tens, and the 20s. And then what happened is the monetary system, human nature takes over. We get greedy. We do things we shouldn't do. The monetary system breaks down. We've done that for history always. Human nature is undefeated.

1:16:48So the monetary system broke down, and what happened afterward? We went through a two-decade, 25-year period where things sucked for a very long time. There's nothing you can do about it. You have to sit there and grit your teeth and bear it until bottom-up processes have time to develop that fix the problem and we get out of it. So we go through these long period cycles. So we're in a long period cycle where we screwed everything up in the 90s and 2000s. We went way too far. You haven't told me how to fix it yet. I have. What do you do? What part of crypto technology? Go ahead. Monetary system needs to be replaced, but it can't be done overnight by flipping a switch.

1:17:23You have to give it time enough to become functional. And to replace the monetary system, how many people need to make a decision for that to happen? Nobody. It's a bottom-up process. It's decentralized. The monetary system that— A part of that is happening. And a part of that is happening. It is. Okay. So if you want to put a positive spin on this, Pat, the positive spin is we're almost 20 years into the downside of the cycle, which means we're 20 years closer to the upside. So you know where I'm at with this? And look, the people that will like this and relate to this, awesome. I can't wait to meet you.

1:17:57The people that won't like this, listen, I also respect. You have your own opinion, and I'm not uncomfortable with people agreeing or disagreeing with me. It's very comfortable in our environment. Let me go through a couple things I wrote here, okay? Number one, people are driven by incentives on what's going to happen to their lives. I trust people are going to make the right decisions to have their incentives for their lives, whatever that may be, okay? Number two, people that have assets, how hard will they work to protect what they have? We know people will work harder to protect the$20 that they have than to go make another$20.

1:18:31A guy store$20 from them, they'll run 10 miles to get that$20 back from the guy, but they won't go put an additional 10 hours in a week to make an additional$400 or$300. But they're going to protect what they have. Okay. So people are going to make the decisions to say what I currently have right now, I'm going to protect. Number three, dream. Everybody has dreams. Everybody has dreams and they want to pursue. Some are going to give up on the dreams. Some are not going to give up on the dreams. Whoever you listen to will either destroy your dreams or is going to get somebody to say I'm going to continue it.

1:19:00I've gone to churches where the main thing the pastor wanted to talk about is the end of times is here. The end of times is here. The end of times is here. You're going to hell. The end of times is here. The end of times is here. I got it. I understand. I've read Revelation. The end of times. No, but it's right now. It's reminding of what happened in the city of Corinth. And watch what happened in Las Vegas and OnlyFans and Sophie Reign and all. I got it. I understand. Tinder, totally get it. All right, so what do I do if it's the end of times this year? Do I just go to that pastor and say, that's why I don't work that hard.

1:19:36I'm just going to sit around and not do anything because the end of times this year. The end of times this year. That message doesn't create urgency in a way of going out there and fixing things. I'm sorry I don't relate to that. And I've been in a lot of these meetings. I was in a meeting one time where a man named Monty Holm told me, Mormon man, very successful financially, phenomenal guy, good family guy. He says, Patrick, don't go into the – I just got promoted to a position of CEO. He says, I don't want you to go into this meeting. He said, why do you not want me to go into this meeting? He says, Pat, I want you to host a meeting.

1:20:03I brought up, who was the guy, Chris Gardner from, what was the movie, Pursuit of Happiness. Pursuit of Happiness, yeah. About Mary Lou Retton up. She's like right here, and I look like it's my daughter, but it's like it's Mary Lou Retton. And then after hosting this meeting, Cal Ripken Jr. was speaking about consistency and not giving up. And then I'm going into the CO session. This is Patrick. I'm telling you, he writes me a letter. Don't go into this meeting. So the more he says don't go into this meeting, guess what I want to do? Go to the meeting. There's 56 people, something like that in the meeting.

1:20:31I said, can you just tell me why you don't want me to go into this meeting? He says, Pat, you're on fire. Your attitude is so positive. You're going to have big things that's happening to you. These people, 90 % of them, all they do is bitch and complain how hard the business is today. Don't go into this meeting. What do I do? I go into this meeting. And guess what? I sit there and hear. All the men I respected and admired, guess what they did for three straight hours? Bitch and complain? These are people that have been in the insurance business for 25, 30 years, 20 years, and I've only been in the business for five years.

1:21:04All they're doing is bitching and whining because 2008 is the worst time to sell insurance, is the worst time to be in the stock market. Do you know my business, my business, Oblivious PBD, who doesn't have an NB and all these other guys are the brilliant guys. From 2002 to the day I sold the business, we never had a down year, ever. Every year we grew. What do you want me to tell you? What do we go through from 2002 to 2000? And when do we sell the business, Tom? 2022, we sold the business. We went through COVID. We went through 08 market crash. We went through bullshit, bullshit. Every freaking, you know our numbers.

1:21:38We grew every year. And I'm not a brain scientist, you know, schooled. No, we just grew. But Monty had a very good point when he said, if you go in a meeting like this and you're around other people who are no longer excited about the future, they're going to rub off on you. and you have to fight it off. And I went in and I came out and said, Manny, I understand your point already, what you were saying. I fully got it. I'm not those guys. I don't relate to those guys. So for me, whether you agree with what I'm saying or not and all this other stuff and you want to be a pastor that says the end of the world is coming, great.

1:22:12Don't go do anything about your life. Just sit home and go collect coupons and what do you call it, clipping coupons and take your cash that you got from the government and find a way to get a regular job and don't give your best. Don't read any business books. Don't go pick up any new material. But this guy didn't become successful because he sits right and works his ass off. I think one thing we have to do as individuals and leaders in a time like this is we can openly talk about the shit that is hitting the fan. We can't criticize the president. I do. $5 ,000 to win a vote, horrible idea. Horrible idea to win the votes.

1:22:43Affordability, it's not a real thing. It's a hoax. It's a real thing. They're going through it. Yo, it's not AI. Oh, it's dumb. No, it's not AI. No, we should look into it and see and get these guys to come in and educate us. we don't have all the answers you can be a billionaire still know nothing about a different industry i can be a 47 year old successful financial guy and i want to listen to will because i want to know what 30 year olds are thinking about right now i really do i want to know what he's going through i want to learn from i can learn from a nine-year-old kid that's been playing the piano for five years he can teach me piano as i know nothing about piano and how to play it i just know i like to listen to it so i think that's the mistake in the blind spot that we have in the white house right now where we're kind of like you know when you have success you kind of feel like you are, you know, everything is going, you have to listen to everybody.

1:23:24But at the same time, if there's one thing I flip and respect about this guy that's working at the White House is the level of optimism he has, whether he's right or wrong. Everybody can learn from that. The guy's 80 years old, working harder than anybody else, answering questions 24-7 to people that are bitching and whining at him. And he takes all the calls. I'm trying to get a hold of the president to give an idea to him on how to help out with affordability. You know how quickly she got back to me? She said, the president's scheduled a call with you. Can you get on a call with us? I got a call scheduled right after the same.

1:23:57Hey, we got to do something with affordability. I'm trying to impose my ideas. Whether they do or not, I don't know. But I don't relate to this, you know, and here's what went wrong. And here's what, yeah, okay, then what? Then what? What can I do to fix it? Give me that. If I lose 90 % of the audience because you don't relate to this message, I'll do this show by myself. and listen to my own self. I'm not changing this message. And I don't think Americans, we need to go subscribe to the fear porn nonstop, have the difference. I want to know why Thomas Massey wants to get Hexer to resign. Why?

1:24:29Give me the motive. What's your motive? I want to know why Speaker Johnson wants to shut down. Let's learn and talk to each other. Why do you want to do this stuff? But if we lose the optimism and we lose that enthusiasm and we lose the fact that we believe this is the greatest country in the world, holy shit, horrible times are around the corner. Holy shit, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to subscribe to that camp. And I think we need to a little bit go back to the, here's the five things that is going on that I fully disagree with that's shitty, but these are my three solutions.

1:24:58Here's what's a horrible thing in our brains collectively. You're brilliant. You're brilliant. You're brilliant. We're sitting here with, I'll skip on Adam, but I'm just saying like. Just say I'm cool. You say I'm cool, baby. I think I'm a regular guy that's just curious. At 1.8 GPA, man. Just so you know, I don't even put myself in a brilliant category. I put myself in a category of I'm curious. I want to learn. I want to talk to everybody and see what can we do to make this thing the greatest country in the world. Yeah. Period. I think that's kind of what we need to go to. You know, you see churches that congregations decline and all they do is bitch and whine.

1:25:32And then you see churches that are growing. Pastors saying, hey, no matter what happens, you're going to see your father. You're going to see your late mom. You're going to see your family. We got a place that's waiting for us. I think a little bit we are a little bit subscribing too much to fear porn and listen, I'm sorry about the rant I went on right now, but I think we need a little bit of that in our house when we're going to dinner with the kids and the wife and the family I think it's a little too much it's a little too much this discussion isn't about giving up this discussion is about being honest thank you, I don't mind being honest no, the honest discussion is when Will says it sucks not to look at him and say you're just a lazy piece of shit no one's saying that though they are No.

1:26:10Yes, lots of people are. You don't work hard. No. You don't work hard. By the way, Jeff, I will tell you, part of them are also right. Sure. So he even said it. He says there are people that are also right. So this thing to be like we're 100 % right on everything, we're oblivious if we think that. When my kids, like, I have a credit score for people who complain. You know what my credit score is for people that complain? Here's how it works. Tom has a high credit score. if Tom complains, I'm listening of something that's going on in the company. My wife, she's not a complainer, but if she tells me something's going on in the family, guess what?

1:26:48I'm listening. Melva, my nanny, if she comes and says, hey, Daddy, I don't want to say this, but this person disrespects me a lot and I don't want to start a fight, I just think they look at me as a nanny and I think I'm more than a nanny to you. I've been with you for 20 years. I said, who's talked to you like that? This. I'll go talk to that person and confront her and say, I said, listen, if you talk to her again like she works for you, you're going to have a problem with me. This is not just a nanny to us. This is a blood to me on what she's been with me for 20 years. So I watch who's complaining, and I watch who's – and to be honest with you, there are people that are just complainers.

1:27:20But then there are people like him. He's working. He's doing his thing. I want to listen. I want to know what he has to say. But we have to know there is also both sides of the extreme side of the story that we've got to give a little bit of credibility. All I'm saying is this. If I've got a brain like Jeff Snyder, I want to see the solutions you're suggesting. That's what I want to hear. I want to use a guy like your brain to come back and say, Pat, last time, remember when you said this? Let me tell you what five solutions I got. I'm looking forward to that podcast. I want to hear that. I think all of us needs to be challenged a little bit to think that way.

1:27:51This may not be a popular thing, but I think this mindset was popular 2 ,000 years ago. I think this mindset was popular 1 ,000 years ago, and I think it's popular today. And the only difference is there's more noise today than ever before because we all have podcasts. We all have a show and we all are talking and we all are tweeting and we all are saying stuff. And, oh, my God, let me see what that person said. I'll give you the final thoughts and we'll go to the next. I mean, you can work hard and make something of yourself. Of course, that's there. But there are also more hurdles at the same time.

1:28:16So it feels like, you know, kind of everyone's right. When I had my business, it was called Pure Basics Collective. It was kind of like Amazon or Etsy, but for super healthy products. You know, I became a certified health coach and I was reviewing all this stuff. You know, think of like raw milk and tallow on the face, all this stuff. And so we'd bring in these people who are small businesses. They would all sell it on the site. And, like, one of the things that we had to do, you know, the site is, we're no longer active, unfortunately. But, like, one thing, just an example, like, when you're doing your website, you have to make it ADA compliant, right?

1:28:42If you don't have your site ADA compliant, then, you know, shark lawyers will come in and check out people's sites and then, you know, do cases against you and all this stuff. And it's like, why do I have to do that? Why do I have to make my site ADA compliant? But, by the way, like, but I don't even, I want to challenge you on that, buddy. I mean, I went into – it started an insurance company right after 2008 where compliance regulation was freaking skyrocketed. No, no, I'm not saying it's not possible. No, all I'm trying to say to you, if I'm playing a role of an uncle or a father figure or an older brother to you, I don't even want my son to talk that way.

1:29:15My son, he – one week all the kids in the house were sick before the vault. He was a starting lineup on the team. Then the next week he's at the vault for one week, so he doesn't go to practice. this next week at a game he gets a knee injury the coach pulled him he only played two quarters instead of the four they're doing quarters right now in soccer it used to be two apps but it's he's playing 11 v 11 well you know what it's not fair i'm not playing no what i would take you out if i was your coach this is hard and and but as hard as it is will you think you would have been famous 20 years ago as famous as you are right now you think the world's gonna know who i am 20 years ago who the hell am i 20 years ago i'm just an insurance guy look who we are right now we got But right now in a room, just so you know, 16 ,000 people are sitting in the bathroom stall or their car or their work, acting like they're working, and they're listening to us, agreeing, disagreeing with us.

1:30:0520 years ago, nobody has a clue who I am. So what would I do 20 years ago? I got to get a WME agent. Who the hell is getting a WME agent with this guy, CAA? Who? What am I doing? I'm working at Fox. I'm working at CNN. Who signs this guy? I got to go to Columbia, whatever the university is, or go to Brown or one of these bullshit, what are the big journalist schools out there? out there. I got to go to those schools for me to barely get a job and go kiss everybody's ass to make my way up to getting a job at Fox or CNN or CBS. You kidding me? The world now knows who Will Witt is. We are living in a ridiculous time.

1:30:40And if I have to exchange the regulation, go back a hundred years ago, a hundred years ago, AC, TV, radio, this is the greatest time ever. But we have challenges. And we can agree. That's what I'm saying. I'm agreeing with that. That's OK. But all I'm saying is the regulation stuff. Every industry has got regulation stuff they're dealing with. Trust me. It's not in every industry. Right. We got to find a way to rise above it. Leaders. We need to be leaders and we need to rise above it. And this message. Trust me, I didn't make any new friends today. I'm telling you, I didn't make any new friends today.

1:31:11People are pissed off at me saying you don't understand what people are going through. I feel like we're good friends now. Oh, I, Jeff. But but my challenge to Jeff is you have a brain that needs. to be used to come up with solutions and share that with us. Every time you come here, I look forward to hearing from you because I really respect the brain of yours. But I want you to think about bigger solutions. I want you to think about if you're in the room and the president's listening to you, what would you advise him to do? That's the challenge. That's all it is. It's nothing more, nothing less.

1:31:40That's why you're here, because the world needs people like you. Yeah, and I appreciate that. People need to whip people out and say, hey, you know, stop being so negative. Yeah, every once in a while, we got to go through, okay, let's go to the next door. Let's talk about Vivek is going against Amy Acton in, what do you call it, Ohio? Can we look at the Cal Shea of Vivek and Amy Acton, please? Nobody thought Ohio and Amy Acton was going to get ahead of Vivek. If you go back to February 2025, go to February 2025, all the way back, look at this. You got 83.5 to 16.5, okay? Then we go to today, go to the flip side of today, is Amy is now 54-9 against 45-1.

1:32:24If you're somebody that's watching to say, man, I think Vivek's got a shot, you may want to go on Calci and create an account and go that side. But the market right now is saying Amy Acton is going to be beating Vivek. Tom, how did this happen? Vivek was a superstar everywhere. How did this happen? Was it just that tweet or is it more than the tweet? It was more than the tweet, but the tweet started a waterfall effect. Ohio is in the middle of America. The middle of America doesn't want to hear that the middle of America has, you know, perceptive problems that he was talking about. And they certainly don't want to hear in the middle of America that a guy that sounds like an elitist engineer who's already sold this company, oh, yeah, nice to be you, they don't want to hear that.

1:33:10And so it was how he responded to it and the little comments that he's been making along the way. And then they're in the middle of America and they're facing this and they're facing the economy and the affordability crisis, Pat. So those two things came together. Vivek did it to himself a little bit. And God bless you, Vivek. I love you. But after that comment, you didn't kind of rally with it. And then also the wave of affordability crisis came that. And those are the two things that are hitting him hard. And now you've got this woman coming from, you know, the the angry white middle age, crazy town, crazy town, Democrat woman.

1:33:51And it's she is the the air has been sucked out of the room and she's coming in with it. Those two things came together. It's not any more complicated than that. And so they don't see Vivek as understanding them. He lost that momentum. The economy moved, affordability moved, and she moved into the into the gap. And that's exactly what we've got going on here. He needs to be out there talking about all the things that we could be doing. He could be doing, hey, let's lower the restrictions on housing so we could build houses. If we have more house, the price of each house will go down a little bit.

1:34:23We'll have supply. We need to – we have a – let's take what Patrick was talking about taxes. Let's do that. Let's drill baby drill and have more oil and energy here so that we are not just an exporter of natural gas to Europe. We could have more here and we could build jobs on this. Those are three so simple things, taxes, housing, and energy. And he could be talking about those in Ohio in the middle of the U.S. But I think he lost the narrative, Pat, and he didn't come back and say, you know what? American exceptionalism is what I believe in. I've taken advantage of it. I've been part of it. But we've got to go.

1:34:58And I just don't think – and by the way, I like him. Do you think most do? No. They used to. So why? That's the thing. Why? He didn't come back. He seems a little arrogant and aloof. I'm sorry to say that, but the average person looks at him, he seems arrogant and aloof. Do you think that's fixable? It is fixable. Talk about things and have solutions and demonstrate that you've got the ability to do it. Okay. Where are you at with this? Do you think he's going to win or lose? No, I think he's. Is it fixable in months? No. No. I think, again, this is. So you think he's going to lose? I think Republicans are in for a really tough November.

1:35:34As sad as that is and what that actually means, Republicans are in for a tough November. People would have given him a little bit of slack if things were different. Yes, I think, Tom, you're right. He's a little bit aloof. He doesn't connect well with the average American. Most of the average Americans would say, okay, that's not a big deal. But when kitchen table issues are front and center every single day, you don't want aloof. You want somebody who says, I feel your pain. And aloof said it was aloof, but then he said something. Well, he actually confirmed everybody's worst fears. Look, the greatest states in the country right now are led by Republican governors, Ron DeSantis, shout out to him, and Governor Abbott in Texas.

1:36:14And the former greatest states in the union, Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul, have completely ruined. So I'm not following the Ohio race. I do like Vivek. I understand that a lot of people maybe have been turned off. I'm a fan. and I want to say when's the last Ohio hasn't had a Democratic governor since pre-John Kasich 15-20 years ago so Ohio's doing pretty damn good Ohio State's doing pretty damn good Columbus, Cincinnati you even had LeBron out there in Cleveland be careful what you wish for Ohio things are going pretty damn good for you and if you don't go with Vivek you're going to go end up potentially what's happened in California and New York So you're saying for the voters to show up.

1:37:03A lot of people think they're not going to show up. Then if they're not showing up, who is the onus on? If the onus is on Vivek, why are they not showing up? Now, by the way, just so you know, this is just a Calci poll, and we follow Calci because nowadays that's where I go to. I trust these polls more than any other polls I look at. When Calci puts this up, I want to know why the audience has put$1.7 million on choosing Amy over Vivek. Why are they doing that? Why do you think? Just to be clear, these are odds, right? So, like, it's 50-50 at this point, give or take, right? It's not. It's 55-45.

1:37:3654-46. So, I mean, it's. But also. But, Adam, but go back to. This is kind of like a Polivier. Polivier. What was his name? Pierre Polivier. Pierre Polivier. He had a 94 % chance, and he lost to Carney. Now, he royally screwed up. He royally screwed up because he did not want to work. Vivek's not a guy that's not a worker. Oh, Vivek is. Pierre was an arrogant, pompous, eating apple, I don't need to sit down with podcasts, scared, walking on eggshells, little bit of a pansy-esque type of Stalin. And now, after he lost, he's not going to do a podcast, which is good. But I'm trying to find out. This isn't over with right now.

1:38:13Will, what do you think about Vivek's chances of winning against Amy? I think it's tough. And, you know, to kind of say the elephant in the room with this, you know, the fact that his last name is Ramaswamy. And I don't know if people totally look at him as the Republican candidate. You know, just to be completely honest with the vice president's wife's name is Usha. Of course. You know, you know, but we elect people elected Donald Trump for being Donald Trump. So you think the name is going to hurt him? I do. I do think it hurts. I think it makes people less excited about him. You know, I think right now in America, you're seeing all sorts of problems that I guess you could say are race related.

1:38:49but a lot of it comes down to like ethnic, ethnically done. And I think that people, I don't know if people want this. I'm going to be completely honest. Just because he's Indian or because of his last name or because of what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we just, we voted for Barack Hussein Obama. Yeah. What are we talking about? Yeah. So I. That was Democrats. You know, the Democrats voted for. Well, also there's a lot of people in the middle that voted for him. You're saying Republicans may not. Yeah, I'm saying Republicans may not. I think it's also. Oh, sorry. What could he do? What could he do, Will, to change it?

1:39:20Like, remember when the first time Trump was running and, hey, grab him by the you-know-what. So what did he do? He went and got a Mike Pence, hardcore conservative and safe and Christian. And no, he's a good man. He's a good man. And I think Pence played a bigger role for Trump winning than J.D. did for Trump. I don't think J.D. played any role for Trump winning. I think Pence did. What could he do here strategically to be able to regain the vote, regain the Republican Party? I think he's got to push hard on the America First agenda. I think if he's not going forward with that on American interests as the first thing, you know, I mean, there's all this talk about these H-1B visas and bringing people in and all this kind of stuff.

1:39:53And if he doesn't really take a stand against that, you know, I think it's going to be losing. All right. We'll see. Let's go to the next story. Paramount. Always known for being, you know, for the most part in California, they set California exit plan over antitrust battle with blue states. $111 billion WBD merger and they're leaving. So now speculation where they're going, some people know, some people are speculating, but Paramount is deadly serious about relocating its headquarters out of California. If the state doesn't drop out its effort to block the company's pending Warner Brothers discovery merger sources toward deadline with executives telling L.A.

1:40:31Mayor Karen Bass and Attorney General Rob Bonta that billion dollar merger with Paramount CEO David Ellison has called blackmail in response. California has floated Georgia, Tennessee and Texas as possible new homes. Bonta's office called the relocation talk, saber rattling, saying what Paramount decides to do and Paramount's choice alone. County's Economic Development Corporation report estimated a full relocation could cost California 28 ,000 to 58 ,000 jobs and$10.6 billion to$21 billion annually in economic output. Tom, how big of an impact would this be and how likely is it that they're leaving?

1:41:10This would be the impact that they're saying. I buy off on the numbers. The numbers, yep. I have no reason to doubt those, number one. Number two, I don't think it's saber rattling. I think if you look at it, back in the old days, why did you need to have steel mills where they were in the Rust Belt? Why? Because we're moving ore across the Great Lakes. That's where the ore was. The ore gets offloaded, goes into smelters. We made steel. We made iron. We did all this. In a streaming world, you do not have to be in California. In a world where you need the labor that the studios need, you don't have to be in California.

1:41:49It used to be convenient. The fact is, this icon, the Paramount Arch that everybody drives from and takes pictures and everything like that in L.A., you know what? They haven't been making movies at the volume that they were back there for 25 years. They've been in Vancouver. They've been in Georgia. They've been in other places. They've been doing things on sound stages there, but they really haven't been there in terms of the factory of content, nor do they need to necessarily be there. And they're looking at the cost of real estate and the cost of doing business there. I don't think it's saber rattling.

1:42:23I think they're saying, you know what, I can make a lot less money. And one third of the music industry moved to Brentwood, Tennessee, and there's streamers and there's a lot of things in Tennessee, and Tennessee's favorable for it. So they're like, you know, I'm moving. You don't have to be there. It used to be that everybody was there. So kind of like the Rust Belt and the Great Lakes and the ore coming on ships and barges, it used to be that that was it. It's not no more. You don't have to be there. And it's a cost decision. I don't think it's saber-rattling. Will they move? Paramount. I give it 60 % that they're moving.

1:42:58Jeff, what do you think? It's not saber-rattling. 100 % they're moving. But I don't think it – I think they're using this as an excuse. I think they were going to move anyway because of what Tom says. It makes no sense. It's a great opportunity. Yeah, you don't need the scale of Los Angeles anymore like you're used to. So it made more sense to move, and they're just saying, let's just speed up the timetable. They're giving us a reason to do it. Where are you at? Yeah, why would you not leave California? I lived there. I lived in Los Angeles, right over by the Warner Brothers Studios myself, over in Toluca Lake for five years.

1:43:25It's a great city, by the way, Toluca Lake. It's amazing, amazing. A little farmer's market. You know who used to have a house in Toluca Lake? Marilyn Monroe. Really? Used to have a house in – I know that because – Every single Hollywood apartment I would move into, too, they'd always say, oh, Marilyn Monroe lived right now. No, I see the houses. The houses in Toluca Lake that she had in a corner area. But, you know, relative of ours bought it many years ago. Yeah, and I loved it there. But, you know, there comes a certain point. It's a breaking point. You have to leave. And it seems very obvious why they won't.

1:43:52I think whether you're any of the big major studios, whether you're Sony, Warner Brothers, Paramount, the question is, you know, whether they're going to leave or not, is why would you stay? Why are you staying in L.A. at this point? Just because, like, future generations, I'm sorry, past generations loved Hollywood and what Hollywood did for America. Yeah, that's great. We can have sort of like that wonderful feeling about what happened back in the day. But looking at where California is headed, why would you stay and sign up for more of this nonsense? That's my opinion. And by the way, Paramount, the weather in Florida is incredible.

1:44:26Come on here to Florida, South Florida. You're not going to do better. You know, Glenn Beck bought at the Blaze, I think, the old Paramount building they had in Dallas. Did you know that? Yeah, yeah. He said he has a massive studio. I don't know if you've ever – have you ever been to it? No, I haven't been to it. It's incredible. Have you been to it? It's ridiculous. It's a museum. It's ridiculous how beautiful that place is. Spread your wings, Paramount. Spread your wings. It could be a place, but Florida – Time to put the nail in the coffin. Well, you know what needs to be happening? I hope Governor DeSantis' team is calling and selling and making a pitch on why Florida.

1:44:56Sell the dream, baby. Sell the dream, baby, to come to Florida. I think we need to be recruiting these guys to come down here. All right. I'll sign up for that recruiting. All right. Next one. Joe Rogan thinks AI running the government would stop all wars on the planet. Okay, all wars on the planet. I don't know if you have a clip in the back or not, but I'll read this. If you have it, pull it up. Joe Rogan said he hopes AI eventually replaces humans in running government and international relations, telling physicist Carlo Rovelli, as AI becomes more and more omnipresent, one of the things that we're going to farm off is government.

1:45:30Imagine a war where it stops, a world where it stops. Is this it? Go for it. It sounds like a very crazy hope, but my hope is that as AI becomes more and more omnipresent, as we start farming off various tasks to it, one of the things that we're going to farm off is government. One of the things we're going to farm off is how we interact with other countries. I know that's terrifying to people, but just think of the disastrous effects that we've had so far with humans doing it. If all international military conflicts ended instantaneously upon AI governing the use of conflicts and military weapons.

1:46:25And imagine that. Imagine a war where it stops. All war stops on the planet. That is one of the things that everybody wants, but no one thinks could ever possibly happen. If you ask the average person in the street, what are the odds that in 10 years from now, there'd be no war anywhere on earth? Everyone's going to say, no, you're never going to have that. Isn't that insane that the idea of people, for whatever reason wanting to kill each other is universally accepted as being something that's always so in other words humans have a terrible historical record of governing conflict do you agree with what joe is saying here jeff no i think it's incredibly naive to begin with uh and it's it's a hell of a lot more complex than just saying if we only got people to act rationally we wouldn't have conflicts.

1:47:14That's just nonsense. I mean, it's utopian nonsense is what it is. Why would he say that? Because I think there's, in the context of discussion we had earlier, that people are tired of it. People are tired of conflict. That doesn't mean that we can just eliminate it through farming off governmental capabilities to a machine. That doesn't necessarily follow. I think it's a bad premise. It's a bad argument, and it ends up in crazy town. I think it also has to do with the fact on that question that Trump is not warning about any AI safety. Trump is basically coming out and saying, you know, we don't need to worry about this.

1:47:47It's all going to be fine. Independently, people will do it. And I think that's a big misstep. Tell me why. Why do you think? So you're 30 years old. You just turned 30 last week. Why are you? Are you concerned? Are you optimistic? What role do you think AI is going to play? Oh, I'm incredibly concerned. I'm actually writing my third book right now. It's called This Book is Not Written by AI. And it should come out next fall. I am entirely against. Yeah, you won't find it on here. it's it's you know still working on it but um incredibly concerned for all a multitude of reasons you know we can talk about human extinction and all that coming and of course that's scary and and it would kill us all and all that but the main point is is that it's taking away people's humanity and it takes away people's ability to think for themselves you know like i'd be i go and do these debates on college campuses right and i'm there i don't have any notes i have to basically read everything before be like a human encyclopedia so that anyone who comes up and asks to be about a multitude of millions of different things.

1:48:41I have to know the answer. And I'll be there talking to people, having a conversation, and they're on their phone on AI talking to me while fact-checking it at the same time. That's not real knowledge. That's just me debating in AI. Why do you even come up to the microphone if you're just going to search this? And people do this for everything. And they're not actually learning anything. And if you go to any of these big companies right now, they're going and writing all their press releases with AI. They're doing all their marketing with AI. It's like, at what certain point, it's like, why am I paying you $200 ,000 to run marketing for our company when I could have some intern that I pay$15 an hour that just puts in the exact same prompt as you.

1:49:16You're basically useless. People have amazing minds, amazing brains, and we're losing it to social media and AI. And it's only going to get worse as the AI love epidemic comes, the transhumanism comes. I mean, so many different problems that are coming. Tom, what do you think about what Rogan is saying here? Do you agree with him? I think Rogan was speculating. And he was saying, wow, you know, all these things that were, what do you use the word farming? We're just farming them out to this and this and this. And I think what he was getting at, if we farmed out to AI, you know, working with other countries, as I was reading this, one of the things we're going to farm about how we interact with other countries.

1:49:49I know that's terrifying people, but just think of the disaster effect that we've had so far with humans doing it. So I think what he's saying is when humans and egos get together, countries fight. If AI was doing it, then it would be told, don't fight, just find a solution. I I think that's what Rogan was saying. So he's a little Pollyannic because you do get to the part, okay, well, then what are humans really doing? What relationships do we really have? And I don't buy off on that. I think this is a time for humans. This is a time for statesmen. This is a time for connection. This is a time for somebody standing up and leading, not programming AI how to lead.

1:50:25And by the way, whose fingers are on the keyboard? You're going to come back to somebody whose fingers are on the keyboard giving it the parameters. Oh, by the way, this is Iran. So be aggressive and be in charge and don't give them an inch. Okay, well, we just eliminated the conflict, but now it's programmed in. So I think Rogan was just speculating, and I discount it because leadership means human interaction representing humans. And I just don't buy off on all the wars would stop if AI was doing it rather than your president, your secretary of state. I've actually been watching sort of the evolution of Joe Rogan.

1:51:02I've been listening to a lot of his old stand-up lately. Has anybody listened to Pandora? Everybody still listens to Spotify and Apple. I still have Pandora. And you can put together a comedy channel and Joe Rogan's Monkeys in Space stuff that he used to talk about. And what I've noticed about Joe Rogan is this, is that he's like the original just-asking-questions guy. Hey, look, I'm just speculating. I'm just asking questions. The things that he said recently about Jesus and religion are actually incredible given like things he said 10, 20 years ago when he was sort of anti-religion. So I've seen him evolve politically.

1:51:40I've seen him evolve on one of the things. So when I look at Joe Rogan, I don't look to him as a substantial debate. I look at him as saying, hey, wouldn't this be interesting to talk about? Who I would basically listen to are basically the AI companies, not the politicians here. So, and regarding AI, you know, again, I'm not the brainiac here, but I do try to research. Are you familiar with something called the Luddites? You familiar with these people? That's what people call me. Are you really? Well, I'm not, but that's what I say. You're a Russian Luddite. So the Luddites were during the Industrial Revolution.

1:52:15I believe it was going on in the UK in old British times. They were basically English workers who worked in factories who basically rebelled against the revolution, rebelled against the machines like just a famous group uh rage against the machine so the luddites in the 1810s 1820s whatever they were someone who disliked and basically distrust technology so the technology that they were using for their for their for their their jobs they would start smashing and ruining the technology and you know lo and behold they were wrong the industrial revolution basically went on it changed the world and the world's better for it so i'm just wondering if the AI doomers and people, the wits of the world evidently, are basically the Luddites of today.

1:53:00And you can't stop progress, and these things are going to happen. To tie this in with Joe Rogan, I think he's just basically posing a question. But for me, I think there's a lot of doomsdayers out there basically saying that AI is going to take over the world. Rogan's saying that it's going to save the world. Yeah, so to me, the way I think about it is, I don't know why, oh, I had a, who was that guy that said his name is professor and it wasn't a professor it was a teacher but he was saying that trump's gonna win he's gonna go to war to iran he's gonna lose jang okay the asian guy so he said something when i was talking to my my the part i really enjoyed about the conversation with him is how much he can criticize china while living in china and says yeah those are issues we just don't talk he lives in china yeah at the time when i talked to me was doing the podcast from china he says no we can't criticize you we just don't talk to and don't talk about those topics because you know we just we there's a mutual understanding with the people to criticize the china government okay peace doesn't always mean freedom so if ai eliminates 100 of war what does world look like for humans let's go there in brave new world there is no war yeah exactly you have this dystopia yeah what what does that look like what decisions can we make How quickly are we getting arrested?

1:54:15So I'm going to that. And then the other part, when Lenin, you know, Stalin, all those guys, they took Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto and they brought it to Russia and USSR, and it was 100%. Nobody makes money, but government's going to take care of you. Everybody drove the same car, same apartment, same underwear, same clothes, same this, same that, and this is how it is. What did Russians all start doing? They all broke the law. And what did they do on the side? They all had side businesses, and they found ways to make money. So that was 100 % communism and all. And when they come to the U.S., a lot of times when you talk to Russians, they'll say, Pat, I don't know how to say this to you, man.

1:54:52My parents, we grew up breaking the law to make additional money, and that was a norm. It's not like nobody was seen as a criminal because we all did it. Everybody broke the law in the USSR to make money to take care of their families. So they come to the state. Guess what happens to them? They think that's still the norm. So he was trying to explain to me, we've lived like this for 40 years, 30 years. This is all we know, that you have to find a way to break the law to make money. And then it takes a generation sometimes for that to get out of the system and say, not in America. You don't need to do that.

1:55:22Go make as much money as you want. Just do it legally here, right? So I don't know if world peace is ever going to exist as long as mankind is making the decisions. And I don't even know if I like it. The only way world peace comes through AI, I think, is because people will be so docile and destroyed mentally that they no longer, they just sit in chairs as sacks. What a horrible life. I love the debates. I love it. It's also progress. Progress breeds conflict. That's right. We continue to grow. We continue to have new ideas. Obviously, there's going to be people who have, you know, you talk about the Luddites.

1:55:55That's a perfect example. The irony with the Luddites is they were. Look at the wise man. I know, the smart guy over there. The Luddites were actually correct. about one thing. They were afraid that the machines were going to take their jobs. Machines did take their job. But they were wrong about, exactly, that's what they were wrong about. So progress comes with conflict. To try to reverse engineer conflict out of the equation means almost necessarily there is no progress. I'll tell you a story. I was at a bar a little while ago in Sarasota, and there was this guy there. He's probably 20, 21 years old.

1:56:26And I'm not trying to be a snoop, but I'm like looking over at what he's doing. And he's Snapchatting, you know, I'm still using Snapchat in 2026. And he's talking to this girl, sends selfies, and the girl sends something back to him. He takes her message. He goes to ChatGPT, types it in, and says, what should I respond to this girl in the thing? How are you supposed to actually talk with a girl in person or whatever you're trying to do if this is the way you're living? The bigger thing is if he's in a bedroom with her, and he's like, what do I do next? That's a bigger problem. That's where we're going.

1:56:56Hopefully he has a bigger problem. But, you know, when you're going through this, Obviously, there's going to be a lot of conversations like this. I made a video like 10 years ago saying by 2052, the president's going to be a robot. And they're going to be campaigning to say vote for this robot because this robot knows how to make the decisions to minimize war, conflict. This video was like 10, 12 years ago. We made it in 2016 when we were in the Providence Towers. It's out there public. Somebody could find it. But let me get to the next story. Last story I want to get to before we wrap up is Saudi accuses Houthis of attacking Mecca.

1:57:34And Houthis is like, no, we didn't do that. That's not what we did. He says, no, you did. So Saudi Sikh allies, Sikh allies help as missile defenses run low in fight with Houthis. Do you have the video, by the way? Is this the video? Go for it.

1:58:02deficient

1:58:08So, Saudis seek ally help. Saudi Arabia's running law on missile interceptors has turned to regional and western allies for help. Two regional officials said the Saudis asked France, Britain, Pakistan, Egypt to deploy air defense support against the Houthis missiles and drones. The outreach came because the United States and the kingdom, the kingdom's main arms supplier has seen its own interceptor stock dwindle over the past six months. War of Iran. Saudi Arabia accused the Houthis of trying to strike Mecca with a drone declaring the city a red line. The Houthis denied it. A crucial Saudi pipeline has been shut for weeks.

1:58:42The Houthis have seized islands in the Bab el-Mendev Strait, and oil remains above$100 a barrel. One official said the kingdom is in a very difficult position, having to protect bases, government installation, and oil facilities. Adam Barron, a fellow at the Washington think tank New America, said that this is not just the Houthis versus a Saudi issue, but a question of guaranteeing international shipping routes. And then U.S. opts out, opts not to back Saudi Arabia and the Yemen meeting Houthis leaders. How do you feel about the story, Jeff? I don't think we have nearly enough information. I mean, who is, what's actually true here?

1:59:18Is this a false flag operation to expand the wider war for Saudi Arabian purposes? Is this a legitimate threat? Obviously, it's a legitimate threat in terms of the theater. But is this a is this Saudi Arabia versus Yemeni rebels conflict or is this actually part of the wider Iran conflict? I think the U.S. by not backing Saudi Arabia says you guys, it kind of says that this was a false flag thing, that Saudi Arabia wanted to expand the wider conflict. And the U.S. does not consider it part of the their goals and their in their conflict with Iran. But not really a whole lot of information here, Tom.

1:59:53Yeah. Number one, there's not a lot of information. But number two, these two guys go way back. In 2022, after about a year of border clashes, very real border clashes, Saudi and Yemen had a truce, including the Houthis. 2022, they had a truce. No one knew what was going on. It was out in the back corner. You know, the Western media didn't cover it a whole lot. Some not not not. In the meantime, the Saudis made a defense pact just recently with Turkey and Pakistan. And now they reached out to Turkey and they say, hey, dude, help me with this thing in my backyard here. They're breaking the truths and they're doing things.

2:00:31And oh, my gosh, they launched something at Mecca. And the Turks said, hang on, man. We really haven't gotten our pact validated by our parliament. And we want to chill just for a second if that would be all right. Can we do that? And he said, well, they're doing this. And so the Turks, which is the largest military in the Middle East, is Turkey, you know, clearly said we don't want to be drawn into this clash down there because Saudi wanted other people to clean it up. And then who did Saudi ask? They asked us. And we said, you know, we bombed the Houthis down there. We hit a bunch of their camps and stuff for about eight days, apparently about a year ago.

2:01:12Yeah, we're not into kind of starting it up down here. So what's interesting to me is that the Saudis are saying, oh, my God, they've thrown something at Mecca. And they have this clash that's been going on in 2021-22, Pat. And now even Turkey said, no, I really don't want to get drawn into this down there right at the moment. And then we said we want to get drawn in. So what everybody is saying is like, Saudi, come on, the Houthis are your guys. And they are Syed Shia, I believe, is their sect of Islam. And that sect happens to revere Mecca as well. So it's like, yeah, I think what everybody's seeing down there with Saudi, for all the reasons articulated, Pat, is I think you got to work this Yemen thing out.

2:01:56You got your own treaty down there and no one is sure of what's going on. So neither the Turks or the U.S. wants to jump in and start start blowing shit up. Adam. Man, this Muslim on Muslim crime got to stop, guys. you know the Houthis and the Saudis and the Iranians and the Qataris they're all I mean come on guys let's let's figure out who your real enemy is here uh obviously I'm joking here but lost in all this did you hear about this secret meeting that took place in Germany apparently a week ago between the CENTCOM United States uh aligned this meeting between Israel Egypt, Saudi, the Emiratis, Jordanians, I think the Bahrain, and one or two other Middle Eastern countries to basically get them in a room and say, guys, what are we doing with Iran at this point?

2:02:48And the fact that Saudi, Egypt, the Qataris, the Emiratis are sitting down with the Americans and the Israelis signifies one major thing. Iran is the bad guy and everybody knows it. At some point, you know, Israel, who's not even being mentioned these days because, you know, no Jews, no news. They're basically saying, hey, Israel, would you mind lending us a hand here and helping us figure out what to do? Because quite frankly, we're incapable of beating a ragtag terrorist group called the Houthis. So, and we're also incapable of beating the IRGC. So please help us, would you? because clearly Saudi, and respect to MBS, I think he's doing great things in Saudi, you're using all American weapons.

2:03:36You have all our capabilities. We've given you planes. We've given you bombs. You can't beat the Houthis. What are you guys doing over there? Is that the way it happened? Everybody gets together and America says, what do we do about this? And then the Emiratis. Who do you think is in charge of that meeting? The Emiratis say, who's the Qataris? What are you saying, Tom? Yeah, what are you saying? I'm saying you get everybody together and it says, what do we do about this? And it says, who's we? You know, you started this. It's escalated over to us. We've engaged. We agree that Iran is a bad actor.

2:04:08But who's we? What's your point? He's making a very good point. He's saying we didn't start this. You started. No, no, no, no. The Houthi thing, to correct everybody, has been going on for 20 years in Yemen. No, that's not what he's saying. No, no, but you mixed it. You're talking about the meeting. We're talking two different things. Okay, but that's also... That's also a part of it. I'm not isolating anything. That whole region is chaos. No, I know. But you started, and I'm reacting to your first point that you correctly made about the secret meeting in Germany getting together to talk about Iran.

2:04:39But it wasn't just about Iran. It was also about the Houthis. It's about a mess with the shipping straits and what's going on here. It's all interweaved into one thing. It's how do we get out of this mess? I think that's what the meeting said is it's not. The Houthis is a Saudi problem. We don't consider it part of the wider conflict. I think that's the consensus here. Well, the Saudis obviously don't. The Saudis are asking everybody to come to their defense. And the Saudis would get their weaponry from America. So it's downstream of our problem anyway. That's the thing. Everybody keeps saying no, which should tell you that their view of this conflict is not part of the wider conflict.

2:05:11Well, we'll see what happens here. But when the Houthis take over shipping straits in the Red Sea or in this other area, everyone's going to get involved anyway. So I think that was part of the conversation. Yeah, I'm actually on Adam's side for this one. I think you're right on that. I think it will probably escalate into something else. And it seems, yeah, I mean, again, not enough information, and we'll see what happens. But, again, like what happened with Iran, escalating things there. It said it wasn't going to happen. It was going to be over. I could see something like that happening here in the same thing.

2:05:37Awesome. You know what today is for me? Today is Friday. And a few months ago, when we pay, when we have our pay cycle that we pay people, I made omelet a few months ago for everybody. You know what I'm doing today? I'm making chicken barbecue. Oh, yeah. I'm coming for lunch today. My recipe that I've been doing this for the last 26 years, I've got to go cook for everybody. But, Will, thanks for coming out. It was great having you on. Of course. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, guys. And your analysis on NFL season is spot on. Next time we have to talk about disc golf. We've got to talk about disc golf.

2:06:11Yeah, disc golf. Disc golf. And, Jeff, as usual, I can't wait for our next one. Yep. And you know what I want to hear the next one? I'm going to have a 20 ,000-word report. Jeff, do it. You're like an economic rock star. You're like an economic rock star. You've got the hair, you've got the glasses. You're doing both things. Everybody else, have a wonderful weekend. God bless. We'll do it again on Monday. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye. Thank you.